What Plato said

WHAT PLATO SAID

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
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653

. . .

WHAT PLATO SAID

PAUL SHOREY

Professor of the Greek Language and Literature , The University of
Chicago; Member of the American Acadejny of Arts and
Letters; Associede VAcademie Roy ale de Belgique

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

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SECOND IMPRESSION OCTOBER 1 934

COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.

PREFACE

The text of this book is a resume of the entire body of the
Platonic writings. The endeavor has been to omit no significant
ideas and to give with every idea enough of the dramatic setting
and the over- and undertones of feeling to forestall the misun¬
derstandings to which abstract analyses and propagandist quo¬
tations of Plato are especially liable.

The success of this method others must judge. There are of
course some omissions of detail or of repetition of Platonic com¬
monplace, and the paraphrases are not to be treated as con¬
strues. But I do not think that I have anywhere appreciably
misrepresented Plato’s intended meanings. In any case the mar¬
ginal references make verification easy. With this understand¬
ing the text is submitted to the judgment of professional stu¬
dents. It can be read continuously, however, by others, and will
be found intelligible without the aid of either Greek or foot¬
notes. In order not to interfere with this use of the book, the
notes have been relegated to the end of the volume. Their ob¬
ject is, first, to relate the dialogues and all the ideas of Plato to
one another by cross-references that will exhibit what I have
elsewhere called the unity of Plato’s thought, and, second, to
interpret the thought by typical — of course not exhaustive —
parallels and illustrations ancient and modern.

With the aid of the secretaries and research assistants gener¬
ously provided by the Rockefeller Foundation I have read and
excerpted nearly all the Platonic literature that has appeared
since the publication of my Unity of Plato' s Thought some thirty
years ago. The plan of this work does not require or permit me
to refer to all of it, and enforced economy of space has com¬
pelled me to omit much of the material that I expected to use.
For notes on the Republic I must refer readers to my translation
of the Republic in the Loeb Series, and for all but the indis¬
pensable minimum of notes on the Timaeus to my earlier arti¬
cles on the Timaeus and to a future study of science in Plato.

I have also found it necessary to substitute exact references

V

VI

PREFACE

to page and line for quotations of the Greek text, and to omit
most of the passages which I intended to quote from modern
Platonists. Specialists will perhaps perceive that they have been
present to my mind. I have still quoted or referred to enough
for the purposes of this book, and the bibliographies though not
exhaustive are, I hope, sufficient. For aid in the preparation of
these bibliographies and similar work I owe special thanks to
my research assistant, Mr. Procope Costas, and for indispensa¬
ble help in preparing the entire volume for the press, to my sec¬
retary and research assistant, Miss Stella Lange.

Though the unity and consistency of Plato’s thought can be
appreciated only by those who study his writings as a whole, the
synopsis of any dialogue in this book can be understood without
reference to the others. Readers who wish to learn at once Pla¬
to’s real opinions (apart from metaphysics) and get some notion
of the intelligence and practical good sense of this “dreamer”
might turn first to the otherwise less interesting Laws . Hurried
reviewers who are willing to treat the book fairly might read the
synopses of the Republic , the Gorgias , the Phaedo , and two or
three of the minor dialogues. I presume that no questions of
“priority” will arise. If they do, I may refer to the dates and
content of my previous writings about Plato. In reviewing them
I find little to retract or change, though there are some sen¬
tences which, quoted apart from the qualifying context, have
given rise to misapprehension.

Thanks are due to the editors of the Loeb Series for permis¬
sion to use my translation of the myth of Er, and to the readers
and compositors of the University of Chicago Press for their
indefatigable co-operation in our Sisyphean endeavor to extir¬
pate errors from some twenty thousand references.

Paul Shorey

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Life of Plato .

Plato’s Writings in General .

Euthyphro .

Apology .

Crito .

PIippias Minor .

Hippias Major .

Ion .

Charmides .

Laches .

Lysis .

Protagoras .

Gorgias .

Meno .

Euthydemus .

Phaedo .

Menexenus .

Symposium .

Phaedrus .

Republic .

Cratylus .

Theaetetus .

Parmenides .

Sophist .

PoLITICUS .

Philebus .

Timaeus .

Critias .

Laws .

Epinomis .

Doubtful and Spurious Dialogues .

Alicibiades I and II, Cleitophon, Minos, Hipparchus,
Theages, Rivals, Eryxias, Axiochus, Sisypyhus, Demodocus,
Peri Dikaiou, Peri Aretes, Definitions, Halcyon

Bibliography and Notes .

Index .

vii

'-57

58-73

74-80

81-83

84-85

86-go

9I_95
96-99
I 00-105
106-12
1 13— 1 8
119-32
133-54
1 55-59
160-68
169-84
185-88
189-97
198-207
208-58
259-68
269-86
287-93
294-307
308-15
316-28
329~49
350-54
355-407
408-1 1
415-44

445-670

673-86

I

THE LIFE OF PLATO

The few certain facts of the life of Plato and the sources of our
knowledge of them have been repeatedly collected. He was
born 429-427 b.c. and died at the age of eighty or eighty-one,
about 348/7 b.c. The ancients celebrated the seventh of Thar-
gelion (May) as his birthday. His father, Ariston, traced his
lineage to Codrus and the early kings of Attica and so to Posei¬
don. His mother, Perictione, sister of Charmides, cousin of Cri-
tias, was descended from Dropides, the friend and kinsman of
Solon. Glaucon and Adeimantus, chief speakers with Socrates
in the Republic , were his brothers. Adeimantus was the elder.
The Antiphon of the Parmenides, son of Pyrilampes, was his
half-brother. His name, Plato, is not an uncommon Greek
name. It was variously interpreted as referring to the breadth
of his shoulders, his brow, his style. He received the education
of young Athenians, of aristocratic and well-to-do families.
There was a tradition of his successes as an athlete, and of his
experiments in verse. Before, some say after, meeting Socrates,
he was said to have studied with the Heraclitean Cratylus,
whose name is given to one of the dialogues. He is said to have
become a disciple of Socrates at the age of twenty, some eight
or nine years before Socrates’ death in 399* After the death of
Socrates, he withdrew from Athens to Megara and is supposed
to have traveled with intermissions for the period of some twelve
years. To this period belongs his first Sicilian visit at the court
of the elder Dionysius, and the story that he was sold into sla¬
very on the island of Aegina by the Spartan ambassador Pollis,
at the instigation of Dionysius, and ransomed by one Anniceris
of Cyrene. He may or may not have taught at Athens during
these twelve years. But with his return from Sicily, about 386,
is associated his purchase of an estate near the precinct of the
hero Academus, and the establishment there of the school to
which he gave the name Academy. The forty years of resi-

In Aegina? Diog.
L. in. 3

On Rep. 327 C

Parmcn. 126 BC,
127 A

Infra, p. 18

Zeller 414
Ritter I. 84

Infra, p. 29

I

2

WHAT PLATO SAID

dence, teaching, and writing at Athens that followed were inter-
367 and 361-360 rupted by his two visits to the court of Dionysius the Younger
in Syracuse. Otherwise little is known of these forty years of
his life, except conjectures about the dates of his writings and
Diog.L. hi. 41-43 a few anecdotes of his relations with contemporaries. His will,
chaignet. 73 preserved in Diogenes Laertius, provides for his relatives. He
had perhaps previously endowed the Academy, and appointed
his nephew Speusippus as the first head.

A ready writer could fill in the framework thus supplied and
construct a modern novelized biography in three chief ways:
(1) He could enliven his sketch by all the legends and anecdotes
that gathered about Plato’s name in the eight centuries of an¬
cient culture after his death. (2) He could expand the life of
Plato as Masson expanded that of Milton, by narrating it “in
connection with the history of his time” and describing at large
all that Plato must have witnessed, experienced, and felt. (3)
Infra, p. 58 On the supposition that the chronology of Plato’s writings is
determined and that the mainly spurious letters are genuine,
he could attempt to trace the necessary sequence and evolution
of Plato’s thought from his Socratic discipleship and the youth¬
ful exuberance of his satires on Periclean society to the logical
aridity of the so-called dialectical dialogues and the disillusion¬
ment of the Laws ; and he could exercise the sympathetic his¬
torical imagination by divining the occasion and the motive of
each one of Plato’s principal works, and the mood or emotional
Ritter, i, 272 crisis which it expresses. The biography of Goethe has made the
development of the personality by the life and the contribution
of each item of experience to the shaping of the thought and the
determination of moods an obsession with scholars. They not
only regard this as the first principle of a truly penetrating
criticism, but it is the one thing that chiefly interests them. And
when it is plausibly done, it undoubtedly attracts the general
reading public more than a sober, objective interpretation of
the work itself. It is admirably done in Wilamowitz’ Platon ,
which, if we regard it as a historical novel, is deserving of all
praise. But a historical novel it essentially remains. How could
Professor Wilamowitz or anybody else possibly know that the
Phaedrus represents a happy picnic day to celebrate the com¬
pletion of the Republic , that Plato never read the extant work of

THE LIFE OF PLATO

3

Thucydides but had read the lost writings of Thrasymachus,
that Plato could never have written the Laws if he had ever
visited Sparta, that the Theaetetus originally contained no dra¬
matic Introduction, that Plato lectured without manuscript,
that Eudoxus was rector of the Academy in Plato's absence,
that Plato began to write a dialogue entitled Thrasymachus but
threw it aside and wrote the Gorgias instead and later re-wrote
the unfinished Thrasymachus as the first book of the Republic ,
that Plato brought home from his travels the plan to found a
school, that the Laches , Charmides , Euthyphro , and an omitted
dialogue on justice were written solely to exhibit Socrates as a
type of the cardinal virtues and have no philosophical signifi¬
cance. Divinatory biographers affirm or suggest scores of propo¬
sitions more fanciful than these, for which there is no evidence,
except the feeling of their authors that they are plausible. As
Campbell judiciously observes, “The less known cannot throw
light on the more known: and Plato's thoughts are better
known to us than the particular incidents of Athenian life which
gave occasion to them."

Plato presumably received the normal education of every
young Athenian of good family — what he himself characterizes
as the education in music and gymnastics established and justi¬
fied by a long experience. There can be no better description
of this education than the one that Plato puts in the mouth of
Protagoras, and which in Jowett's version is copied in all his¬
tories of education. They send the child to teachers and enjoin
upon them to see to his manners even more than to his reading
and music .... and when the boy has learned his letters ....
they put into his hands the works of great poets which he reads
sitting on a bench at school; in these are contained many admo¬
nitions and many tales and laudations and encomia and praises
of famous men which he is required to learn by heart in order
that he may desire to be like them. Then again, the teachers of
the lyre .... make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar
to the children's souls in order that they may be more gentle
and harmonious .... for the life of man in every part has

need of harmony and rhythm . Then they send them to

the master of gymnastics in order that they may not be com-

But cf. Berlin
Anon. Kom.,
col. 3

Rep. 376 E

Prot. 325 C-326 E

Cf. Laws 81 1 A

4

WHAT PLATO SAID

Thucyd. II. 41

Cf. infra, p. 97

Loeb, Rep. I, pp.
xxxvi-xxxviii

415-413 B.C.

Thucyd. VI. 32
with VIII. 1. 1

pelled through bodily weakness to play the coward in war or
on any other occasion.

We must not forget, however, that the Athens of Pericles and
Aristophanes was itself a liberal education, as Thucydides
makes Pericles say, though in a slightly different sense. The
vivid, if somewhat florid and fervent, rhetoric of Macaulay may
here take the place of a superfluous elaboration of the obvious:

Books, however, were the least part of the education of an Athenian citizen.
Let us, for a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to that glorious city.
Let us imagine that we are entering its gates, in the time of its power and
glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico. All are gazing with delight at
the entablature; for Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn into another
street; a rhapsodist is reciting there: men, women, children are thronging
round him: the tears are running down their cheeks: their eyes are fixed:
their very breath is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles,
and kissed those hands, — the terrible, — the murderous, — which had slain so
many of his sons. We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all
leaning forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Socrates is
pitted against the famous atheist from Ionia, and has just brought him to a
contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald is crying — “Room
for the Prytanes.” The general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming
in on every side. Proclamation is made — “who wishes to speak.” There is a
shout and a clapping of hands; Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a
play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern uni¬
versity which has so excellent a system of education.

A sterner and more disillusionizing education was supplied by
the experiences of war and revolution. Born in the earlier years
of the Peloponnesian War, the thirty-year life-and-death strug¬
gle between the Athenian Empire and the Spartan alliance, Plato
was a boy of six or seven at the time of the truce of 421, hope¬
fully styled the “Peace of Nicias,” and he was old enough to
begin to take intelligent notice when after six or seven years of
intrigues and tortuous diplomacy the conflict was reopened by
the consequences of the disastrous adventure of the Sicilian Ex¬
pedition. He witnessed the dismay of Athens and heard the
comments of his relatives when in 413 the news arrived of the
defeat and destruction of the magnificent Armada, whose spec¬
tacular embarkation at the Peiraeus he may have seen two years
before. Pie shared the discomforts and distress caused by the
virtual state of siege to which the Spartan occupation of the
thirteen miles’ distant fortress of Deceleia subjected the city in

THE LIFE OF PLATO

5

the next few years. In 410 or 409 he attained the age of military
service and may have entered as an ephebus the cavalry which
guarded the immediate environment against Spartan raids.

He may have fought in an undetermined battle of Megara, in
which, in the Republic , he says that his brothers, Glaucon and
Adeimantus, distinguished themselves. He may have served in
the fleet at the battle of Arginusae, where the Athenian victory
was marred by the failure to recover the bodies of the dead in
the storm that followed. He probably was a witness of the
scene in the Assembly when Socrates as president, as he ironi¬
cally puts it in the Gorgias, “did not know how to put to vote”
the unjust motion to condemn the negligent generals by one
sweeping decree without allowing them the separate trials that
the law prescribed. He shared the alternations of hope and fear
in the next few years. He perhaps heard the wail of despair that
ran up from the Peiraeus through the long walls to the city when
the swift ship of state, sole survivor of the disaster of Aegospo-
tami, arrived with the news that the Spartan fleet might be ex¬
pected any day. He endured the intolerable humiliation of the
destruction of the long walls to the music of Lacedaemonian
flutes, and the Spartan occupation. He had probably overheard,
as a boy of sixteen, some of the discussions that prepared the
way for the short-lived conservative revolution of 411. And as
a youth of twenty-three he was doubtless invited to share the
counsels of his uncle, Charmides, and his mother’s cousin, Cri-
tias, and of the sincere conservatives or unscrupulous oligarchs
who were planning with Spartan aid to restore the good old
constitution of the fathers and do away with the “acknowledged
folly of democracy” once for all. He had ample opportunity to
observe the actual conduct of these reformers, the so-called
Thirty, when they were once established in power, and may
well have felt what the author of the seventh epistle makes him
say, that their executions, confiscations, and arbitrary decrees
made the mistakes and the follies of the democracy seem like
(an age of) “gold.” He probably had personal knowledgeofmany
of the cases of bribery, confiscation, and judicial murder pre¬
served for us in the orations of Lysias. He must have known all
about Socrates’ refusal to obey the command of the Thirty to
take part in the unjust seizure of Leon of Salamis, and what

Rep. 368 A
406 B.C.

Gorg. 473 E-474 A
On Apol. 32 B

Xen. Hellen. II,

2. 3

404 B.C.

Thucyd. VI. 89. 6

Ep. VII. 324 D 7

On Apol. 32 C

6

WHAT PLATO SAID

Rep. 558 A 4
Menex. 243 E

Rep. 496 C-E
592 A

Laws 660 C

Rep. 496 D
Rep. 473 CD

395-387 B.C.
394 B.C.

Tliucyd. V. 85-
113

On Gorg. 461 C

Shorey, TAPA,
XXIV, 66 ff.

would have been its consequences if the government of the
Thirty had not fallen. He observed with approval the abstention
from reprisals of the restored democracy and its proverbial
“mildness,” though in the Republic he satirizes that democratic
catchword. But the restored democracy condemned Socrates to
drink the hemlock on a trumped-up charge of atheism and
corruption of youth. Plato may not at this early date have ex¬
plicitly said, as he did in the Republic , that all existing states are
hopelessly corrupt, that the good man, unable to combat and
unwilling to share the iniquities of practical politics, can only
take refuge from the storm in the shelter of a wall, and that the
only hope for the salvation of society is that philosophers should
become rulers or rulers philosophers. But these essential con¬
victions must have been taking shape in his mind, and the
author of the seventh epistle, whether the aged Plato or another,
not inaptly puts their formulation into his mouth many years
before the probable date of the Republic .

To complete this conjectural record we may add that he is
said to have served in the Corinthian War, and may have fought
in that earlier battle of Corinth in which it was formerly sup¬
posed that the mathematician Theaetetus, in whose honor the
dialogue that bears his name was written, was dangerously
wounded.

To return to the impressions of his youth, he may or may
not have taken note at the time of the cynical argument by
which Thucydides says that the Athenian generals justified the
shameless imperialism of the unprovoked attack upon the little
Dorian island of Melos. But the record of their speeches in
Thucydides, which he doubtless read when it was published,
would remain and blend with all his memories of cynical, war,
post-war, and revolutionary ethics; and the concise, pregnant,
definitive formulation by the hard-headed historian of the creed
of “real politics” and ethical nihilism was probably one of the
chief causes of Plato’s lifelong preoccupation with the problem
which the persistent propaganda of this creed presented to his
age as it has to our own.

This feeling was doubtless intensified by the career of the
brilliant, versatile, fascinating, unscrupulous Alcibiades, whom
he must have known and who, during Plato’s most impression-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

7

able years, was the most conspicuous figure in Athenian politics
and life, and whose character was a topic of debate in the litera¬
ture of the first half of the fourth century. Plato’s personal
feeling toward him, as toward Aristophanes, was perhaps di¬
vided between moral disapproval and instinctive sympathy for
the social equal and the congenial intelligence. In spite of the
caricature of Socrates in the Clouds , and the calumnies which
the supposed discipleship of Alcibiades drew down upon him,
both Alcibiades and Aristophanes are portrayed as his familiar
friends in the Symposium , and the intoxicated Alcibiades there
pronounces upon him an encomium which is Plato’s most mem- Sy2m22BIsA"
orable expression of his own admiration and love. cf. infra, P. 19

The mature Plato was obviously, apart from his philosophy
and mathematics, a scholar in Emerson’s and Pater’s sense of
the word. He had read the books of his contemporaries and
predecessors and had assimilated all the culture of his time.

We do not know precisely when and how the young Plato sup¬
plemented by this wider reading the normal education of a
Greek boy in gymnastics, music, and the memorizing of Homer
and the lyric poets. And we can only conjecture how much of
the knowledge which his riper writings exhibit he brought to his
conferences with Socrates and to his first experiments in the
writing of dialogues. But we may presume that in alertness of
mind and keenness of curiosity he did not fall short of a Lysis,
a Charmides, a Menexenus, aTheaetetus. And it is quite idle to
dogmatize that he could not have read this or that book or
treatise until his attention was called to it by Archytas in South¬
ern Italy, or he discovered it at the court of Dionysius in Sicily.

Plato’s acquaintance with classical Greek literature needs no
proof. He quotes it more freely and aptly than any other Greek
author except perhaps such late writers of bookish “reminis¬
cent” Greek as Plutarch and Lucian. Plato’s art of quotation
will be considered in a subsequent study of his style. Here we
need only take note of the chief external facts. They are not
quite completely but sufficiently recorded in the indexes of
Fabricius, Hermann, Jowett, Apelt, and in the article of Howes
in the sixth volume of “Harvard Studies.” Plato quotes or al¬
ludes to Homer, if we include some latent quotations, about one

8

WHAT PLATO SAID

Cf. on Charm.
156 E

Phaedr. 270 C ff.

hundred and twenty times. To Hesiod some twelve times. To
Theognis twice. To Simonides twice. To Pindar and Aeschylus
about eleven times each. To Sophocles once or twice. To Eurip¬
ides eleven or twelve times. To Aristophanes explicitly twice.

Of the older Greek lyrists he mentions but does not quote
Sappho and Anacreon. He quotes Ibycus and Cydias and like¬
wise Tyrtaeus, Solon, and Archilochus.

He does not explicitly name Herodotus and Thucydides,
whom he had certainly read. The extent of his readings in the
pre-Socratics and the Sophists will be considered infra and more
fully elsewhere.

It is doubtful whether his references to Orphic and Pytha¬
gorean literature can be traced to particular poems and trea¬
tises, and the entire subject must be discussed elsewhere in con¬
nection with Plato’s alleged mysticism and superstition.

His reading in the Greek medical writers may also be re¬
served for a more special discussion of his acquaintance with
contemporary and earlier science. Some minor authors are men¬
tioned without explicit quotations from their works. Every
well-read student of Greek literature will observe or divine some
latent quotations or allusions, and there must be many more
which in the loss of so much literature we cannot detect. The
number of explicit quotations is no index of the extent of a
writer’s influence upon Plato. Epicharmus and Sophron, ac¬
cording to tradition and in the opinion of many modern schol¬
ars were Plato’s models in mime and satire, and the relations
and analogies between Plato and the in many respects kindled
genius of Aristophanes would fill a monograph.

Emerson somewhere says that next to the author of a good
thing is he who first quotes it. Much of the quotation through¬
out literature is secondhand. Montaigne, Burton, and Cud-
worth have been storehouses of quotations for many generations
of French and English writers. Plato’s quotations were re¬
peated by Aristotle, Cicero, Philo, Plutarch, the later Greek
rhetoricians of the so-called new Sophistiky and the Christian
Fathers to an extent that only a series of special monographs

could verify. , , > .

The influence of the writers quoted on Plato s own thought
and expression may be divined, but it is not easily described or

THE LIFE OF PLATO

9

formulated in a few sentences. As we have said, it is not propor¬
tionate to the number of explicit quotations. The most obvious
impression that Plato would get from the five hundred years of
precedent Greek poetry, and that his reading of Herodotus
would confirm, would be a feeling of background, a sense of lit¬
erary and historic tradition and of the changes and vicissitudes
of human life in the long climb out of barbarism into civiliza¬
tion. He is well acquainted with the familiar modern topic of
the relativity of law and the mores and he has several shrewd
observations that would now be classified under the sciences of
anthropology and archaeology. He remarks on the differences
between the Ionian life depicted in Homer and that of the
Dorians of his own day. There was no fixed Mosaic chronolo¬
gy to check his imagination from ranging at will in the dark
backward and abysm of the unknown pre-Homeric ages. He
was, it is true, neither a critical historian nor an archaeologist
nor a geologist. But for the purposes of philosophy, ethics, and
criticism of life, he had a sufficient conception of the transforma¬
tions of Greek civilization in the course of its history, of the in¬
finite past of the human race before Greek civilization took
shape, of geologic changes that altered the face of Attica, of the
possible contributions of Egypt and the Orient to the culture of
the Greeks, of lost and forgotten civilizations, of the endless di¬
versity of human customs, tastes, opinions, and institutions, of
the cataclysms and cycles of change involving corresponding
changes in the lot of humanity.

These and similar ideas are most explicit in the Twiaeus , the
Laws , and the Politicus , but there are sufficient indications of
them in the myth attributed to Protagoras in the dialogue so
named to justify the assumption that they were always present
to Plato’s thought. He could, as we have said, have confirmed
them by his reading of Herodotus, and, it has been conjectured,
of lost treatises of the Sophists on which Herodotus and Euripi¬
des may have drawn.

In the second place, the Greek poets and dramatists were a
vast storehouse of what Matthew Arnold set the fashion of call¬
ing “poetic criticism of life,” which includes not only the indirect
criticism of their portrayal of action and character, but the di¬
rect criticism of their “sentences” and their explicit moralizing.

Laws 680 C

Lav/s 676 AB

Crit. 1 12

Infra, p. 124

26 D

97 BC

Ar. Met. 987 a 32

Lysis 214 A

Zeller-Nestle I.
968

See Index, s.v.

10 WHAT PLATO SAID

The four poetic prophets of the religion of the imaginative rea¬
son — Pindar, Simonides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles — had an¬
ticipated in some sort the mediation of Matthew Arnold be¬
tween superstition or fundamentalism and blatant dogmatic
irreligion. Their religious and ethical ideas have been discussed
in all histories of Greek ethics and religion and in the chapters
introductory to Plato in the Histories of Greek philosophy of
Zeller and others.

Succeeding these, Euripides and Aristophanes, whom Plato
knew intimately, had made footballs of all ideas with the agility
of a Shaw and the omniscience of a Wells. As our notes and
subsequent studies will show in greater detail, there are, apart
from metaphysical epistemology, few ideas in Plato of which he
could not have found at least the suggestion in Herodotus,
Pindar, the Attic drama, Thucydides, the Presocratics, and the
Sophists. Plato is infinitely suggestive; his writings teem with
ideas. But it is not the number of his ideas but his way of deal¬
ing with ideas that marks him as the world's first and greatest
real philosopher. There was no lack of ideas in the society into
which Plato was born. The very air, as Pater says, was sickly
with cast-off speculative atoms. He must have been early ac¬
quainted with Anaxagoras, who had been a conspicuous figure
at Athens in the previous generation and whose doctrines Soc¬
rates in the Apology says can be bought from the orchestra for a
drachma at the most, and one of whose books, according to a
well-known passage of the Phaedo , was read aloud in Socrates'
hearing in his youth. It would be a plausible assumption that
he went on from Anaxagoras to Empedocles, Parmenides, and
other Presocratics. He is said to have studied Heraclitus under
Cratylus. The boy Lysis admits that he has met in writers
about nature the great principle that like is friendly to like, and
it is not probable that the boy Plato had less intellectual curi¬
osity. Nearly all the Presocratics are discussed, mentioned, or
alluded to somewhere in Plato's writings. The conjectural re¬
construction of the systems of these thinkers occupies in recent
literature a space disproportionate to our real knowledge of
them. It is enough for our present purpose to note that Plato
could find in them more than the germ of many ideas which are
supposed to be distinctively modern. He would find in nearly

THE LIFE OF PLATO

ii

all of them the general conception of the reduction of this varied
world to unity or to a few interchangeable elements. He would
find not of course his own explicit antithesis between material¬
ism and spiritualism, but the provocation and stimulus of it in
a steadily progressive tendency to conceive true science as the infra, PP. 345-46
mechanistic explanation of all things and the negation of all
divine intervention. He would find also a conception of cycles
of change, growth, and decay not differing appreciably for any
practical purpose from Herbert Spencer’s cycles of evolution
and dissolution, or the fancy of the most recent popularizer of
the new physics that the disintegration and resolution of matter
into heat may save the universe from the death by “entropy”
with which nineteenth-century physics threatened it. And he
would find in Anaximander, whom he does not mention, and
others a more or less serious poetic and allegorical interpretation
of such philosophies in the fancy that individual existence is an
injustice for which the individual must pay the penalty by re¬
absorption into the infinite and indeterminate. An idea which
again for practical purposes does not differ appreciably from the
reflections in Tennyson’s ancient sage:

For all that laugh, and all that weep
And all that breathe, are one

Slight ripple on the boundless deep
That moves, and all is gone.

More specifically he would discover in Anaximander, Emped¬
ocles, and others, not of course the modern scientific doctrine of
biological evolution, but its virtual equivalent for philosophical
purposes, the hypothesis that life was somehow a spontaneous
growth and that nature tried many experiments of which only
the fitting survived, that the higher forms of life may have been
outgrowths of the lower, that the prolonged infancy of man was
a cause of the constitution of the family and so of the develop¬
ment of civilization; that the surface of the earth had been sub¬
ject to vast changes in the long course of time. Empedocles, An¬
axagoras, and the atomists, Leucippus, and Plato’s own contem¬
porary, Democritus, would familiarize his mind with hypotheses
about the ultimate constitution of matter which though not
based on the mathematics that support and complicate similar
speculations today produce substantially the same impression

12

WHAT PLATO SAID

Shorey, AJP.
XXI, pp. 205 ff.

Infra pp. 289-90
Phaedo 97 C ff.

Theaet. 152 A 5

See Index s.v.

Herod. IV. 95

on the lay mind even of a philosopher. From Heraclitus and the
Eleatics he would derive the antithesis so vividly described by
Pater, and that pervades his own philosophy, between the ex¬
perience of incessant change and the intellectual and moral ne¬
cessity of the assumption of stability. In Heraclitus he would
find the suggestion and the poetical or epigrammatic formula¬
tion of such extremely modern ideas as universal mutability,
universal relativity, and yet a reign of law or reason somehow
operating in and controlling the eternal process. In the Eleatics
he would find the beginnings of that dialectic of being and not-
being, the one and the many, the like and the unlike, which he
himself in jest or in earnest was to push to the limit in anticipa¬
tion of all verbal metaphysics from the neo-Platonists to the
Scholastics and from the Schoolmen to Hegel and his successors.
In Anaxagoras and Anaximenes he found to him unsatisfactory
but suggestive hints of the possibility that mind in some sense
of the word developed order out of chaos and introduced pur¬
pose into the cosmos. This bare and rapid enumeration is
enough for our present purpose of illustrating possible sources
of Plato’s thought. His own matured attitude toward these
predecessors and the precise relation of his more analytic
thought to their conjectures and fancies will be discussed else¬
where in a series of more special studies.

The so-called Sophists are prominent in the dialogues of Plato
as they were in the Athens of his youth and of the generation
that immediately preceded his. If the youthful Theaetetus is
represented as saying that he had “often read” Protagoras’ dic¬
tum that man is the measure of all things, there is no reason for
doubting that Plato at twenty had read or had heard of and
intended to read that and other published lectures and essays of
the Sophists now lost or known to us only in the overingenious
endeavors of scholars to reconstruct them as the common sources
of Plato and Euripides. The Sophists, like the pre-Socratics,
have been written about to excess. The word “Sophist” in casu¬
al Athenian usage would have included Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. It meant learned man, professor, high¬
brow, “wise guy,” and was complimentary or disparaging ac¬
cording to the taste and culture or purpose of the speaker. In

THE LIFE OF PLATO

13

Plato's Meno , Socrates in speaking to be understood by an un¬
educated slave calls geometers “Sophists." The youth Hippoc¬
rates, who in the Protagoras knocks Socrates up at early dawn
to hear the great Sophist Protagoras who has come to Athens,
thinks that Sophist means, as its etymology implies, one who
knows wise things. In the more technical meaning Sophist des¬
ignates a group — they could hardly be called a school — of men
who from the middle of the fifth century undertook to supply
the need of a developing civilization for some form of higher
education to supplement the traditional education of Athenian
youth in gymnastics and music. The chief Sophists directly por¬
trayed in Plato are Protagoras, who first assumed the designa¬
tion, who is the chief interlocutor of Socrates in the dialogue
that bears his name and whose theories are discussed in the
Theaetetus; Gorgias, prominent in the dialogue of that name,
and referred to elsewhere; Hippias; and Prodicus.

They are represented as humanizers of knowledge, itinerant
university extension professors without a university base. Pro¬
tagoras taught the correct use of language and the art of dealing
with practical affairs personal and political. Gorgias taught the
art of persuasive speech and polyphonic prose, set off with the
ornaments of a new rhetoric of jingle and antithesis and the so-
called Gorgian figures. Prodicus taught many things, but spe¬
cialized on the choice of words and the nice discrimination of
synonyms. Hippias, as satirized by Plato, professes omniscience
and teaches the elements of the sciences, the art of memory, and
other things. To the man in the street Isocrates, who founded a
school about 390, was a Sophist who taught the art of rhetoric
combined with the discussion of the larger political questions of
the day. Plato, who founded his Academy about 386 (?), was
a Sophist who emphasized dialectic or argument rather than
rhetoric and who insisted on a preparatory study of geometry.
Plato and Isocrates distinguished themselves from the Sophists
by their stability as heads of established schools, by the com¬
parative modesty of their pretensions, by the continuity and
systematic character of their teaching, and somewhat unfairly
by the fact that they did not take pay so openly and ostenta¬
tiously as the itinerant Sophists did. Isocrates boasted that his
pupils were recognizably stamped with a common discipline and

Xen. Mem. I. i.
11

85 B 4

Prot. 310 BC

On Symp. 185 C
On Laches 197 D

Hipp. Min. 368

On Hipp^Maj.
Antid. 205

WHAT PLATO SAID

Passim and Busi-
ris 49

Soph. El. 165 a 22

Euthyd. 275 E
272 B 1

Apol. 18 B 8
Ar. Clouds 893-94

14

culture. He regarded the art of sober discriminating, fluent, ele¬
gant, and adorned but not overornate or florid expression as the
chief evidence of true culture, and he thought the discussion of
large Hellenic problems the best theme on which to exercise and
practice this art. To this teaching as a whole he, perhaps in em¬
ulation of Plato, gave the name “philosophy. ” What distin¬
guished Plato was the conception of a scientific education as
opposed to a superficial drill in the arts of success. This dis¬
cipline became identified in his mind with the embodiment of
ethical idealism in the personality of Socrates and with his uto¬
pian plans for reforming the irremediable corruption of fourth-
century Greek life and politics.

To return to the Sophists: Most of our knowledge of them is
derived from Plato’s dramatic pictures of their conversations
with Socrates. Practically everything that is known about them
from Plato and other sources is collected in Diels’s fragments of
the pre-Socratics. Quotations, excerpts, and endless discussions
of the material collected in Diels swell out the enormous and
repetitious literature of the subject. The modern unfavorable
meaning of the word “Sophist” is derived partly from the literal
acceptance and exaggeration of Plato’s satire and partly from
Aristotle’s definition of the Sophist as one who earns money by
a wisdom that is only apparent. The leading Sophists in Plato
are teachers of rhetoric and humanizers of knowledge. They are
not conscious preachers of immorality or contentious practition¬
ers of captious and unfair argument. One Platonic dialogue,
however, the Euthydemus , portrays a different and perhaps later
fourth-century type of Sophist, who possibly in imitation or
parody of Platonic dialectic substitutes eristic for rhetoric and
professes to teach the ability to refute any statement whether
true or false. From this dialogue, from the comedies of Aris¬
tophanes, and from the misapprehension of Plato’s real attitude
toward the better Sophists was derived the conventional ac¬
count in nineteenth-century histories of philosophy of the Soph¬
ists as the corrupters of youth and the conscious teachers of the
immoral art of making the worse, or perhaps rather the weaker,
appear the better reason. They were represented as systemati¬
cally drawing the last unsettling conclusions from the skeptical
negative and materialistic principles of some of the pre-Socrat-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

*5

ics. There were of course from time to time scholars who dis¬
sented from this conventional rhetoric of denunciation. In
Grote’s History of Greece and his four-volume work on Plato,
the apology for the Sophists becomes an obsession. He not only
recurs to their defense with wearisome insistence on every possi¬
ble occasion, but he systematically defends their opinions, the
opinions put in their mouths by Plato, against Plato himself or
the Platonic Socrates. Grote has no difficulty in showing that
Plato himself does not regard the Sophists as a school engaged
in a systematic propaganda of irreligion and immorality. In
spite of touches of irony, Plato treats the greater Sophists, Gor-
gias and Protagoras, with respect and Prodicus with friendli¬
ness. They are no match for Socrates in dialectic. They teach
the arts of getting on in the world as it is, and lack Plato’s con¬
ception of pure science and his passion for reforming the world.
They are the mouthpieces, not the corrupters of public opinion,
but except from the standpoint of uncompromising idealism in
science, ethics, and politics, they are worthy gentlemen and
estimable citizens. As against the ordinary citizen’s contempt
for all intellectual pursuits, Plato, as we shall see, feels a certain
sympathy and fellowship with them. Some of Grote’s successors
have carried his argument still further. There is quite a litera¬
ture of the rehabilitation of individual Sophists and the justifi¬
cation of their opinions. Hippias is celebrated as the representa¬
tive of integral education, universality of culture, manual train¬
ing, and I know not what else. Protagoras becomes the honored
precursor of all philosophies of relativity and pragmatism. Pro¬
dicus’ discrimination of synonyms is confounded with the dia¬
lecticians’ distinction of the meanings of ambiguous words in
argument. And Plato is rebuked for satirizing Prodicus’ impor¬
tunate obtrusion of verbal niceties that are irrelevant to the
question under discussion. In general, all the sophisms attrib¬
uted to the Sophists by Plato or others are treated as conscious
propoundings of serious problems of logic or metaphysics, and
all reasonings which Plato puts in their mouths are regarded as
anticipations of modern liberal and critical philosophies, dis¬
torted and misrepresented by the “reactionary” Plato. It is
forgotten that we know very little of the Sophists except what
Plato tells, and that whatever may have been the suggestiveness

Rep. 492 AB ff.

Meno 92 B ff.
Phaedr. 275 D

Class. Phil., XVII.
(1922), 268-71

On Laches 197 D

Unity, p.
Infra, p.

16 WHAT PLATO SAID

of some of their ideas, there is no evidence and no presumption
68 that any one of them could have systematized and developed
56 such suggestions as plausibly and ingeniously as Plato has done
it for them. The resourcefulness of modern philologians, how¬
ever, has found a way to meet and evade this objection and to
reconstruct as well as rehabilitate the philosophy and the lost
writings of the Sophists. Ideas that are common to Plato and
Euripides, or to either or both of them, and some later Greek
essayist or philosopher are supposed to point to a common
source in some lost treatise of one of the Sophists. It cannot be
denied that this method has given rise to some interesting specu¬
lation and reconstructions eagerly accepted by critics who care
more for novelty than for sober weighing of the evidence. The
irremediable weakness of all such hypotheses is that Plato's
dramatic elaboration of such ideas colors all subsequent ac¬
counts of them and is presumably in most cases their sufficient
and only source. Coincidences between Plato and Euripides
need no other explanation than the fact that Plato could have
seen and must have read many of Euripides' plays, which are as
full of “ideas" as Ibsen's or Shaw's. It is uncritical to press
minor divergences as proof that the common source must have
contained more than either imitator taken singly. These gener¬
alizations, which are all that we at present need, will be con¬
firmed and illustrated by our analyses of the dialogues in which
the Sophists appear and by subsequent more critical discussions
of Plato's philosophy. I do not intend to deny the existence of
lost sophistic treatises which may have contained interesting
and thought-provoking suggestions for Plato. I am only point¬
ing out how slight is the real evidence for the reconstruction of
such treatises and how strong is the presumption that none of
them developed any idea with the consistency, the continuity,
and the wealth and ingenuity of illustration that mark Plato as
unique. Enough has been said here to indicate what the analy¬
sis of the Protagoras , Gorgias , Hippias , Euthydemus and Sophist
will confirm: the prominent place occupied by the Sophists in
the culture of the Athens of Plato’s youth and the position to
be assigned to them by the side of Greek poetic literature and
the pre-Socratic philosophies among the sources of the incom¬
parable wealth of Plato's thought.

THE LIFE OF PLATO

There is in every man, said an eminent French critic, a poet
who dies young. In Plato the poet did not die, but was trans¬
lated and transfused into the philosopher and the prose artist.

We cannot follow the process, for, paradoxically enough, the
earliest works exhibit perhaps the least of the poetical imagina¬
tion. An exception might be made for the images of the bee and
the magnet by which the poet is described in the Ion> which a ion 534 b, 533 e
distinguished scholar fancies is Plato's farewell to poetry. A
passage of “dithyrambic” prose in the Phaedrus has been still 238 d 3
more fancifully taken as evidence that Plato wrote dithyrambs.

The anecdote that on meeting Socrates Plato burned his youth- Du>g. l. m. 5
ful experiments in tragedy with an apt quotation from Homer
may symbolize both the revolution in his mind caused by Soc¬
rates' conversation and the lifelong conflict of poetry and philos¬
ophy in his soul, which will be studied elsewhere. This conflict
is the theme of a pretty modern story, “Plato's First Play,” by
Naomi Mitchison, and of much sentimentality in many modern
biographies of Plato.

No fragments remain of Plato's tragedies, but there are ex¬
tant about thirty epigrams attributed to Plato in the Greek
Anthology . Some of them are obviously of later origin, but there
are some very beautiful ones which are not unworthy of Plato
and which there is no reason for refusing to attribute to him.

Indeed, the rejection of these epigrams by scholars who accept
the second, sixth, and thirteenth epistles is discreditable to mod¬
ern scholarship. The epigram on his friend Dion is quoted be¬
low (p. 45). Two little epigrams are addressed to a youth
named Aster, if Aster is a proper name:

Thou gazest on the stars, my star; ah, would that I might be
Yon starry skies with thousand eyes that I might gaze on thee.

The other turns on the recent discovery that the morning star
and the evening star are one:

Star of the morning shinedst thou ere life was fled,

Star of the evening art thou now among the dead.

Or in Shelley's version :

Thou wert the morning star among the living
Ere thy fair life had fled.

Now having died thou art as Hesperus giving
New splendour to the dead.

Cf. Phaedr. 230 B
Laws 761 AS

Mencx. 240 A-C
Laws 698 CD

Diog. L. III. 6
See Index, s.v.

Gorg. 447 B ff.
Apol. 20 E— 2 1 A
153 B
173 D

38 B 7
117 D

18 WHAT PLATO SAID

Very lovely is this invitation to a weary wayfarer to rest by a
shaded spring, a favorite motive of the anthology:

Here where the breath of the Zephyrs is murmuring soft in the tree-tops,
Here by this whispering pine, stay with thy face to the breeze.

Stay till my waters that babble and blend with the note of the Pan’s-pipe
Lull thee to rest and distill drowsiness over thine eyes.

The following on Aristophanes, whether genuine or not, may at
least remind us of the deep affinity between the two greatest
masters of all the resources of the Greek language, and may
symbolize the undoubted influence of Aristophanes upon Plato:

The Graces seeking for a shrine whose charm should never cease
Found one that ne’er shall fall, the soul of Aristophanes.

The exquisite epigram on the Euboean captives of the Persian
wars buried far from the Hellenic seas in the burning sands of
Ecbatana may be associated with the legend of Plato’s eastern
travels, or, more critically, with the passages of the Menexenus
and the Laws which testify to his interest in their fate:

Far from the billows Aegean that boom on the shore of Euboea
Dead we lie in the wide waste of Ecbatana’s plain.

Farewell, home of our fathers, Eretria, neighboring Athens,

Fare thee well, farewell, waves of the sea that we loved.

At the age of twenty Plato is said to have met Socrates. He is
reported to have “heard” him, to have been his disciple for the
remaining seven or eight years of the sage’s life. How much
that meant, we can only divine. Plato was an aristocratic young
Athenian with many calls upon his time. He was no Boswell.
And it is not likely that he followed Socrates about like the im¬
petuous enthusiast Chaerephon who appears as his inseparable
companion in the Gorgias , who asked the oracle if any man was
wiser than Socrates, and who rushes to greet him when he enters
the gymnasium in the Charmides; or the “mad” Apollodorus
who in the Symposium in anticipation of the paradoxes of the
Stoics thinks all men miserable wretches except the one sage,
who in the Apology offers himself with Plato and Crito as joint
surety, and who in the last scene of the Phaedo by sobbing and
wailing breaks down the nerves and the composure of all present
except Socrates himself.

THE LIFE OF PLATO

l9

Athens was by modern standards a small and gossipy city.

Plato would have had abundant opportunity to observe the pi- symP. 215 ab,
quant contrast between the strange uncouth figure, the Silenus- Theaet. 143 e
mask, the barefoot begging chatterbox, the butt of Attic come- Sy£o b764 a>
dy, and the magic of the man's words, his power to deal with his onaAPoi2i?Bc
interlocutors as he pleased, and to compel everyone who ap- lym}!.’ 213 e 3,
proached him to render an account of his soul and view his Theaet. 169 ab,
opinions in the light of reason; his ability to invent Egyptian xen6MCem.i.2. 14
or any other tales; the homely phrase and low images by which Phaedr.^sB7 E
he illustrated high thoughts; the quaint evasive oath, “By the °288 d* Maj'
dog”; the irony that enabled him to mingle with the world yet yCratyl. 41 1 B
not be of it, the feigned defective memory that introduced the 5673I?, etc.
demand for dialectic in place of the long speeches of rhetoric, the Symp. 216 E
professed ignorance that served to provoke joint inquiry and AP48i3DE’ Gorg'
that substituted the plea “I cannot” for the offensive moral on Hipp5.3&nn.
superiority of “I will not,” the strange fits of abstraction which on charm. 158 d
Plato always represents as absorption in consecutive thought, oS sympd°i74 d
the sudden bursts of moral eloquence that awed his hearers to onMeno86B
silence and made them feel his words set off by some superior
power. “When I listen to Pericles or any other orator of the
day,” says Alcibiades in the Symposium , “I say to myself, ‘He is 21s de
a good speaker,' and that is all. But when I listen to Socrates,
my soul is stirred, my eyes fill with tears and I blush for the
trivialities on which I waste my days. There is none like him.”

How much of this idealized protrait is Dichtung and how
much is Boswellian Walirheit we can never know. Plato and
Socrates, says Emerson, are the double star which no telescope
will ever completely distinguish. That is not quite true. Plato
is Plato as Plomer is Homer and Shakespeare is Shakespeare,
whatever their sources. But the ideal Socrates of the Platonic
dialogues and the hypothetical “Socrates of history” do consti¬
tute a double star which not even the spectrum analysis of the
latest philology can ever resolve. Just how much and what kind
of stimulus the genius of Plato required for the embodiment of
an ideal which is too good to be quite true we can only conjec¬
ture. He had doubtless taken part in such typical gymnasium
scenes as he describes in the Charmides , Lysis , and Euthydcmus .

He had seen Socrates “pitted against the famous Sophist from
Ionia” and had heard him reduce his formidable opponent “to

20

WHAT PLATO SAID

Parmen. 127 ff-

Prot. 31 1 A
On Laches 181 A

Charm. 156 A

Charm. 154 A 8

Thcaet. 148 E

Theaet. 155 D

Apol. 23 C

Rep. 539 B
Phileb. 15 DE
Xen. Mem. I. 2.40

Apol. 33 AB
Euthyph. 3 D
Xen. Mem. 1. 1. 10
Apol. 33 AB
Cf. on Hipp. Maj.
282 CD
On Apol. 19 D
Prot. 318 E
Hipp. Min. 368 D

On Laches 197 D

Prot. 318E-19 A

Apol. 20 C, Laches
200 E

Theaet. 150 BC

Rep. 337 A
Cleitophon passim

Theaet. 150 D 2
Symp. 209 D

Apol. 23 AB

Rep. 598 C-E

a contradiction in terms,” and what the besieged and sorely
tried Athens of 407-401 may have lacked he could learn from
the conversation of his elders who recalled the glories of the age
of Pericles and remembered the visits of Parmenides, Gorgias,
Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus and their intellectual jousts
in the salon of Callias, the son of the rich Hipponicus, or else¬
where. He had doubtless, like the young lads in the Laches ,
heard much talk of Socrates and talked much himself. Like
Charmides, he may have seen him and heard him talk in the
house of friends or relatives when he was himself a boy, too
young to be out in society. Like Theaetetus, he may have
puzzled over reports of the questions that Socrates was in the
habit of asking and so learned that wonder is the beginning of
philosophy. And like the youths to whom Socrates refers in
the Apology , after witnessing the discomfiture of experts and
dignitaries by the Socratic dialectic, he may have made himself a
nuisance by his attempt to imitate that uncomfortable practice.

But we have now only the finished artistic result; we have no
notes, memoranda, first drafts, or early letters to tell us how
such masterpieces as the Symposium and Phaedo took shape or
even how such simpler dramatizations as the Lysis , Laches , and
Charmides were composed.

The conversation of Socrates was open to all who cared to
listen. He took no pay for his instruction. He did not, like the
Sophists, undertake “to educate men.” He did not teach rheto¬
ric like Gorgias or astronomy, music, mathematics, and the art
of memory like Hippias or the niceties of language like Prodicus
or the management of a house or of the state like Protagoras.
He did not profess to know or to teach anything. “I,” he says
in the Theaetetus , “am like the midwife, whose function I exer¬
cise on the minds of others, myself sterile. The common re¬
proach that I ask questions but declare no opinions of my own
is true. I am not wise or cunning and there is no discovery or
invention that is the offspring of my soul.” His only knowledge
was his own ignorance. His only art was his ability to put ques¬
tions that searched men’s souls, that stimulated and encouraged
the shy thoughts of youth, that exposed the pretensions of those
who on the strength of some special knack or gift claimed to
possess universal or the supreme knowledge. Llis function, he

THE LIFE OF PLATO

21

said, was that of the physician who purged men’s minds of their
false conceits; it was that of the midwife who assisted in the de¬
livery of their true and more considered thought.

He himself had no body of doctrine to impart. The opinions
put into his mouth by Xenophon are obviously — except in so far
as they reproduce commonplaces of Plato’s minor dialogues —
for the most part either Xenophon’s own opinions or those
which Xenophon thought would best defend the name and
fame of Socrates against the charges which his judges believed
and against the calumniators of his memory after his death.
The Platonic Socrates is no less obviously the embodiment of
Plato’s ideal of the philosopher and the mouthpiece of Plato’s
ideas. If Socrates had possessed a body of doctrines and a sys¬
tem of philosophy with principles coherent and interdependent,
he would have set it down in writing. The of late much-adver¬
tised speculation that everything in Plato’s writings up to and
including the Republic is Socratic involves the monstrous para¬
dox that the world’s most affluent and precise thinker never
wrote a line and that the writer who gave consummate expres¬
sion to all this wealth of thought formulated no ideas of his own
till he was past the age of fifty. So gross a psychological im¬
probability cannot be taken seriously. And in spite of the cour¬
tesy of British and the timidity of American reviewers, it has
not been taken seriously by many competent scholars.

In respect of method, both Xenophon and Plato seem to con¬
firm Aristotle’s statement that there are two things that may be
rightly attributed to Socrates, inductive argument and the
quest for definitions. The only substantive philosophical dog¬
mas that we can with any assurance attribute to Socrates are
the principles that no man willingly does wrong, that virtue is
knowledge, and that all wrongdoing and error are ignorance, to
which we may possibly add that it is better to suffer injustice
than to inflict it. These Socratic principles the piety of Plato
always reaffirmed, but always as consciously edifying paradoxes
subject to interpretation and explanation. How far such inter¬
pretations are covert criticisms of Socrates or mark the stages of
Plato’s gradual emancipation from Socratic limitations are ques¬
tions which in the lack of evidence may be left to the specula¬
tions of overingenious philologists.

Soph. 230 B-D,
Gorg. 521 E-
2 B

On Prot. 313 E
Theaet. 150 B ff.

Ar. Met. 1078 b 27
Class. Phil., VI,
362

On Laws 860 D
Xen. Mem. III. 9.
4

Gorg. 473

Cf. infra, p. 640

22

WHAT PLATO SAID

Gorg. 473 D
Apol. 35 BC

Crito 45-46 ff .
Phaedo 60 D,6iB
Phaedo 11O D 4

Apol. 30 CD, 41 D
Crito 46 B 5

Cf.onPhaedo6oA

Apol. 38 A 5

Gorg.471 E, 475E

Soph. 228 C 7

But Socrates did not mean for Plato or for the nine subse¬
quent centuries of Graeco-Roman civilization a system of phi¬
losophy to be learned, elaborated, developed, corrected, and im¬
proved. He was a personality, a method, an inspiration, a moral
and religious ideal. Our moral imagination is unable to con¬
ceive what more he could have been than the Socrates of the
Apology , Crito ^ Gorgias , Symposium , and Phaedo , and he may
have been infinitely less. For that Socrates is plainly a creation
of Platonic philosophy and idealizing Platonic art of which we
can affirm only that the inspiration at least must have been
authentic. In all things, says Epictetus (I summarize), the life
of Socrates is proposed to us as a pattern. When tempted or in
doubt, ask yourself what Socrates would have done. Death is
no evil, or else Socrates would have thought it so. He called
death and exile and poverty hobgoblins to frighten children. He
jested in the courtroom, scorned to abase himself before his
judges, and refused to renounce his mission on the promise that
they would spare him. He would not permit his wealthy friend
to bribe his jailer and free him in violation of the laws of his
city. He wrote hymns of praise in prison and had a kind word
for his executioner at the last. For he was strong in the faith
that no harm can come to a good man in life or death. And he
had taught himself to obey one law only, the oracle of the higher
reason in his breast. This kept him true to the mission which
the gods had assigned him, despite the threats of tyrants and
the clamors of the mob. This kept him true to himself while
seemingly all things to all men in all the relations of life. This
taught him how to deal wisely and kindly with a scolding wife
like Xanthippe, a licentious pupil like Alcibiades, and enabled
him always to bring back to his home the countenance of un¬
ruffled serenity with which he went forth into the world. Think¬
ing the untested life not worth living and deeming it his special
mission to help others to test their lives, he was perpetually dis¬
cussing right and wrong and the moral properties and scope of
things. But no debate ever agitated his spirit or drew from him
an unkind word. He needed no witness to the truth of his words
save the soul of the listener convinced in his own despite. For
he knew that every soul is unwillingly deprived of truth. Two
sayings of his will arm us for every occasion of life and death:

THE LIFE OF PLATO

23

“O Crito, if this be God’s will so be it”; and again, “Anytus and
Meletus have power to slay me — but they cannot do me harm.”

This Epictetan religion of Socrates could be reconstructed in
almost identical terms from Cicero or Seneca or Plutarch. It is
all derived from that fourfold Platonic gospel of Socrates, the
Gorgias , the Apology , the CW/o, and the Phaedo. If history
means the living past, this Platonic idealization is the Socrates
of history, the only Socrates that we shall ever know.

Plato’s discipleship with Socrates, if we may call it that,
lasted some seven years. The story of Socrates’ condemnation
by a popular court of the restored democracy in 399, of his
ironical defense before the jury, of his refusal to evade the laws
of his country by allowing his friends to bribe his jailer, of his
last day in prison spent in philosophic discourse, is told once for
all in the Platonic dialogues, Apology , Crito , and Phaedo . As
Matthew Arnold says of Renan’s attempt to re-write the story
of the Gospels, whoever thinks to tell it better is self-deluded.
And in this case there are, apart from a few easily explained
divergences in Xenophon, no contradictory versions of the story
to be harmonized. That Plato has idealized it is probable. Flow
much, we can never know. The precise causes of Socrates’ con¬
demnation by a democratic jury must also remain a matter of
opinion and fruitless controversy. The restored democracy was
very sensitive, and he may have incurred suspicion because of
his association with Alcibiades, Critias and Charmides, mem¬
bers of the revolutionary government of the Thirty, his praises
of the Spartan discipline, his satire, if it is his and not Plato’s,
of democratic license. His unsettlement of youthful minds by
his questioning of established institutions and ideas may have
irritated some worthy citizens, and genuinely alarmed others.
Plato himself deprecates the premature engagement of youth in
such debate, though he is careful to give an edifying tone to
Socrates’ own discussions with young and ingenuous minds.
The attacks of Aristophanes in his Clouds are apparently
motived by something more than the desire to raise a laugh at
a figure that lent itself to caricature. Socrates was for him a
symbol of the new thought of the radical enlightenment, as

Crito 43 D 7
Apol. 30 CD

Cic. Tusc. I. 29-
30, III. 15. De.
or. I. 54

Cf. infra, pp. 461-
62 £f.

Xen. Mem. 1.2. 12
Isoc. Busir. 5

Crito 52 E 5

Rep. 562-65

Xen. Mem. I. 2. 9

Rep. 537 E ff.,

539 BC

Lysis 207 D ff.
Euthytl. 277 D-
282 D

288 D-290 D

Frogs 1491

24

WHAT PLATO SAID

Apol. 36 D, 38 A

Cf. Crito 44 BC ff.,
45 A-C, Phaedo
98 C-99 A

On Apol. 42

Infra, p. 146

59 B 10
78 A

Diog. L. III. 6-7
Zeller 402-14
Ritter I. 86 ff. 93

Euripides of its new literature. In this sense Socrates was a
corrupter of youth. As Browning puts it:

Sokrates? No, but that pernicious seed
Of sophists whereby hopeful youth is taught
To jabber argument, chop logic, pore
On sun and moon and worship whirligig.

The charge of irreligion would not be taken seriously by the
majority, but may well have turned the vote of some “funda¬
mentalist” jurors. But it was probably, if Plato's account is to
be trusted, the defiant attitude of Socrates himself that made
the small majority of the jury feel that he had left them no
choice but to assess the death penalty. Even then we may sur¬
mise that they did not expect the sentence to be executed, but
believed that Socrates' influential friends would contrive his
escape. No such refinements of historic doubt can remove Soc¬
rates from the pedestal where Plato's genius has placed him as
the first great martyr of intellectual liberty, or as modern radi¬
cals naively repeat, the victim of the aristocrats. That his death
marked a crisis in Plato's life and in his feelings toward Athens
and Athenian politics is in itself probable and is confirmed by
the tone of the Apology , Crito , and Phaedo; the temper of the
Gorgias; and hints in the Meno and Republic . But the attempt
to determine by this general probability the order and specific
motives of either Plato’s writings or his travels belongs to the
domain of conjectural and sentimental biography.

The Phaedo states that Plato was absent on the last day be¬
cause of illness. Socrates himself there advises the discouraged
disciples to travel in search of wisdom. And this, the cessation
of the Peloponnesian War, and perhaps a desire to escape from
Athens sufficiently account for the assignment of Plato's Wan-
derjahre to the years immediately following Socrates' death.

The story of Plato's travels is a blend of the anecdotes of a
contradictory biographical tradition and our still more uncer¬
tain inferences from allusions in his writings. Plato was a schol¬
ar like Virgil and an experiencing nature like Shakespeare. We
know that he assimilated all the poetic and philosophic culture
of the Hellenic past in “a synthesis without parallel before or

THE LIFE OF PLATO 25

since/’ Athens was the commercial centre as well as the intel¬
lectual focus of the Greek world. We may assume that Plato
knew what Athens knew of Greece, greater Greece, and the en¬
compassing barbarians, whether he learned it from Herodotus
and other reading, from travelers’ tales in the Peiraeus , or from
autopsy. But there is nothing in his writings that enables us to
say with assurance, “Plato must have seen this.” Shakespeare
probably never saw the Italy of Romeo and Juliet and the Mer¬
chant of Venice , Taine {Life and Letters [trans.], p. 85) boasts
that he had accurately described the Landes without having
seen them, Prescott never saw Mexico, and there is no lack of
examples of modern novelists who lay their scenes convincingly
in lands that they have never visited, of stay-at-home poets like
Wordsworth and Tennyson, who described tropical scenery
more vividly than eyewitnesses, of historians who, like Grote,
construct a sufficient topography of their battles and campaigns
from books and maps, of eloquent Ruskins who have never seen
Greece but have written the most inspiring, if not always the
most exact, descriptions of Arcadia and the vale of Sparta be¬
neath the mighty bar of Taygetus.

We know that Plato visited Southern Italy and Sicily more
than once. It is possible, perhaps probable, that he traveled in
Egypt, and it is permissible to fancy that he was acquainted
with some of the Greek cities of the coast of Asia Minor. But
we cannot affirm that he “must” have seen swarms of Egyptian
children learning mathematics in their games by the method of
play, that he must have learned the story of King Thamous and
the most ingenious inventor of letters Theuth at Aegyptian
Thebes, that he must have observed on Egyptian soil the hie¬
ratic permanence of Egyptian art which gave him confidence to
assert in his Laws that conservative legislation can stem the
tides of change and fashion and fix once for all the types of a
wholesome and beneficent art, or that he could not, unless he
had himself gazed with awe on the Sphinx and the pyramids,
represent his Egyptian priest as saying to Solon, “O Solon,
Solon, you Greeks are always children!” He could well have
written these words under the inspiration of Herodotus’ mali¬
cious story of how when Plecataeus boasted of an ancestry of
sixteen generations, the Egyptian priest conducted him to an

Laws 819 A ff.

Phaedr. 274 C ff.

Laws 656 D-
657 A, 799 AB

Tim. 22 B

Herod. II. 143
Theaet. 174 E 6

26

WHAT PLATO SAID

Polit. 264 C
Laws 637 B

Thcaet. 179 E

Laws 625 AB

Rep. 565 E>

Diog. L. III. 6

Phaedo 59 C
Infra, p. 449

Cf. infra, p. 572

imposing temple and showed him the array of 345 colossal stat¬
ues, the succession of his noble ancestors from father to son.
We cannot say that he must have observed with his own eyes
the shepherding of huge flocks or herds of geese in Thessaly,
that he must have seen the entire city drunk at Tarentum, that
he must have heard with his own ears the patter and the con¬
tentiousness of the energumens of the most advanced sect of
Heraclitean flowing philosophers at Ephesus, that he must have
measured with his own feet the long summer’s day walk from
Cnossus in Crete to the cave of Idaean Zeus, that he must have
heard on the spot the legend of human sacrifice in the moun¬
tains of Arcadia. Still less can we infer from far-fetched and
fanciful analogies with oriental pantheisms and mysticisms that
he must have inbibed the wisdom of the East at its Persian or
Indian sources.

After the death of Socrates the tradition represents Plato as
retiring to Megara, the home of the founders of the so-called
Megarian school of philosophy, Terpsion and Euclides, who are
mentioned as among those present on the last day. The Mega¬
rian school was especially noted for the ingenuity of the logical
puzzles or fallacies which it propounded if it did not solve.

The “Buckle-bewitched” fancy of the brilliant but overin-
genious historian of Greek philosophy, Gomperz, attributes this
tendency to the climate and situation of Megara. He quaintly
says (II, 172-73): “It was the natural destiny of Megara . . . .
to become the centre of the opposition to the systems which

came from Athens . Thus the spirit of criticism throve and

grew strong in the bracing highland air of the little Dorian set¬
tlement.”

The Theaetetus which, though its main purpose is psychologi¬
cal, presents many specimens of subtle or dramatically sophistic
dialectical reasoning, is thought to be dedicated to Euclides by
its dramatic Introduction, in which Euclides, who has been es¬
corting the wounded Theaetetus on his way to Athens, explains
to Terpsion how he collected and wrote down the notes of the
Socratic conversation which constitutes the main body of the
dialogue. Though the Theaetetus as a whole has much more hu¬
man and literary interest, it is associated with the comparative-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

27

ly arid dialectical dialogues, the Sophist , Politicus , and Par -
menides , by the passages of similarly hairsplitting reasoning
which it contains. And so Stallbaum and many nineteenth-cen¬
tury successors assign this group of dialectical dialogues to a
supposed “Megarian period,, of Plato’s philosophy in which the
problems of logic and mere metaphysics engaged his attention
before, and not, as now believed, after the composition of the
Republic and the other artistic masterpieces of Plato’s middle
period. This psychologically improbable fancy is now, as we
shall see, generally rejected, though Zeller believed in it with
reservations till the end. From the point of view of the unity of
Plato’s thought, it makes little difference, since the Republic and
the Phaedrus contain more than the germs of the ideas and
methods of these dialectical dialogues. It is probable enough
that Plato withdrew to Megara for a time and that his thought
was influenced by his friend and co-disciple Euclides, but the
extent of the influence and the attempt to rehabilitate the Me-
garians by the discovery of profound philosophical meanings in
the puzzles attributed to them are pure conjecture, unsupported
by convincing evidence.

We have no means of knowing how long or continuously
Plato resided in Megara or how much of the next eleven or
twelve years was occupied by his travels. It is of course more
than improbable that he was continuously absent from Athens
so long. And his service in the Corinthian War would be
explicit evidence of the contrary.

If we assume Plato’s IV under jahre to have ended with his re¬
turn to Athens at the age of forty in 387 (?), there remain for
him forty years of life, twenty of full maturity and twenty of
approaching or realized old age, which may be thought of as
beginning with his second visit to Syracuse in 367. During the
first twenty years we may suppose him to have watched with
the mixed feelings of a conservative yet an idealistic reformer
the decadent politics of declining Athens; to have established
and developed his school, the so-called Academy; to have com¬
posed the Republic and many of his artistic masterpieces such
as the Phaedo , the Symposium , the Phaedrus , and the Theaete-
tus; to have entered into relations with or formed his opinions of

Infra, pp. 590 ff.

Infra, p. 604
Unity, p.5i,n.377

Ritter I. 82

Loeb, Rep. I, p.
xxxix

28

WHAT PLATO SAID

Infra, p.

Infra, p.

Loeb, Rep.
xxxi

Clouds

Clouds

his chief literary contemporaries, Democritus, Lysias, Isocrates
Xenophon, and Antisthenes.

Plato’s political philosophy will be deduced from or associ¬
ated with the Republic , the Politicus, and the Laws in the notes
to those dialogues and in subsequent technical studies. The
146 passionate, unsparing condemnations of the Gorgias, whose date
is doubtful, express the still unappeased embitterment of Plato s
soul by the judicial murder of Socrates, and also the reaction
against fifth-century Periclean imperialism which Plato shared
146 with most thoughtful conservative Athenians of the first half
of the fourth century and which even the orators who point
with pride to “yon Propylaea” and “that Parthenon” acknowl¬
edge by the admission of decadence.

The Menexenus ( ca . 386) has been fancifully interpreted as an
apology for the condemnation of Athenian statesmen in the
Gorgias and an attempt to conciliate public opinion by the re¬
turned traveler who was about to open a school and who was
ambitious of taking an active part in Athenian politics. That
philosophical and educational romance, the Republic, has been
still more fantastically taken as a program or platform of re¬
form and a bid for leadership.

We do not know the precise date of the establishment of the
Academy or the stages by which it developed into a more or
less formal school of philosophy and science. We can only di¬
vine Plato’s motives, and it is idle to conjecture which, if any, of
the dialogues was intended to prepare public opinion for it or to
set forth its “program.”

The mythical hero, Academus, gave his name to a precinct
1005 and grove where at the date of Aristophanes’ Clouds there
seems to have been a gymnasium, or at least an exercising
ground dedicated according to one tradition by Cimon. Aris¬
tophanes’ contrast of the wholesome youths who raced with
1008 their temperate fellows where the plane tree whispers to the
elm, instead of wasting their time and growing pale in vain dis¬
putations with Socrates, is a singular contradiction of the asso¬
ciations which Plato’s name has linked for all time with the
olive groves of Academe. Plato was said to have taught in the
Academy as Antisthenes in the Cynosarges and Aristotle in the

THE LIFE OF PLATO

29

Lyceum. After his return from Sicily he is said to have bought
a garden in the immediate neighborhood and in course of time
to have equipped it with a mouseion or shrine of the Muses, and
walks and seats for open-air lectures and discussions. This is the
Academy that has given its name to the long line of similar
institutions derived from it. It passed by inheritance to Plato’s
successor in the school, Speusippus, and is reported as still
belonging to the school nine centuries later. By what legal
process, if any, this continuity was maintained or renewed we
can only conjecture. The property may have been consecrated
as a temple of the Muses, and the possession of a thiasos or sa¬
cred association for their worship. The tradition tells of gifts
for its support in Plato’s lifetime and after, and of endowments
and of lectureships there. Cicero relates that after hearing a
lecture of Antiochus in the morning at the Ptolemaeum, he,
with his brother and his friend Atticus, walked out in the after¬
noon to the Academy, which was deserted at that time of day.
In the solitude they could almost fancy that they saw Plato
himself in his adjoining garden. The place, three quarters of
a mile northwest of Athens, is in its barrenness disappointing
to the modern tourist who brings to it memories of the beautiful
lines of Aristophanes and the glorious chorus of Sophocles in
praise of the neighboring precinct of Colonus. Modern imagi¬
nation has tried to reconstruct the life of the Academy with the
aid of the later tradition, one or two references in the Platonic
letters, and the idealization of the fellowship of the philosophic
life in the Platonic dialogues. We hear of lectures, conversation,
banquets, and rules to regulate their conviviality.

The tradition of the neo-Platonists, the Christian Fathers,
and the preachers of the Middle Ages that Plato intentionally
chose an unhealthy and malarial site for his school in order to
subdue the flesh is not appreciably more fantastic than those
combinations of modern philology which from the fact that the
worship of Prometheus was established in the neighborhood in¬
fer that Prometheus in the Protagoras and throughout the dia¬
logues is a symbol of the Academy in its conflicts with the cynic
Hercules represented by the Cynosarges.

Somewhat less fanciful are the better-founded conjectures of
modern scholarship with regard to the nature of Plato’s teach-

De fin. V. I

Oed. Col. 668 ff.

320 D ff.

3°

WHAT PLATO SAID

Infra, pp. 32 ff.

Rep. 521 C ff.

Rep. 532 ff.

On Phaedr.

275 D ff.

Zeller 439

Infra, p. 587
Infra, p. 317

Infra, pp. 294-95

Infra, p. 296

ing in the Academy. Like the “school” of Isocrates, established
perhaps a year or two earlier, the Academy met in a more serious
and systematic way than the itinerant Sophists the need for a
higher education supplementary to the old Greek education in
music and gymnastics. We may suppose the method and con¬
tent of Plato’s teaching to have borne some resemblance to the
education which he prescribes for the guardians of his Republic.
There would be the preparatory discipline of the mathematical
sciences to be followed up and crowned by serious discussion
and debate of ethical, political, social, and metaphysical prob¬
lems. There were doubtless many modifications in practice of
the rigidity of such a scheme. In spite of Plato’s disparagement
of the written word, there was of course much use of books and
of contemporary and earlier literature. We hear of occasional
lectures by Plato himself, and of one especially famous lecture
on the “Good.” We may fancy, if we please, that there were dis¬
putations conducted in the manner of the Middle Ages with
Plato or some elder student as presiding arbiter. We may see in
the Parmenides a lesson in logic devised by Plato to exercise the
wit of his students. The Philebus may be interpreted as the re¬
port of a discussion guided by Plato to determine a controversy
that had arisen within the school. We may conjecture that the
interest in methods of classification displayed in the Sophist and
the Politicus found its reflection in the exercises of the school.
We may presume that more advanced students like Aristotle
and visitors like Eudoxus took part in the instruction and were
regarded by Plato rather as associates in the common pursuit of
truth than as mere pupils. From this point of view the Academy
of Plato’s later years may be and has been described as the earli¬
est organization of scientific research and anticipation of the
schools of Alexandria. This view of the Academy has in turn
been denied by scholars who are hostile to Plato or who desire
to maintain a different thesis. Plato, they argue, was a dreamer,
an idealist, and a metaphysician and never attained to Aris¬
totle’s serious interest in scientific fact and experiment. The po¬
etic fancies of the Timaeus and the applications of dichotomy to
biological classification in the Sophist and the anecdotes of his
direction of the mathematical studies of specialists are too
slight a basis, they say, to establish the claim of the Academy

THE LIFE OF PLATO

3i

to rank as a real school of science. Lack of evidence and the
uncertainty of the definition of science make this controversy
a logomachy. Plato was undoubtedly an artist and a thinker
rather than technically a student of science. But the educa¬
tion which he prescribed for his guardians, his interest in ReP. S2iff-
mathematics, and the studies which such a work as the Timaeus
must have required are, as we shall see, a sufficient refutation of
the prejudice that proclaims Plato the antithesis of the scientific
spirit.

As head of the Academy and author of a succession of brilliant
works Plato must have been known to and have known the
leading writers and thinkers of his day. But our knowledge of
his relations with them is limited to what we can infer from their
and his works. The allusions to the Academy in the fragments
of the Middle and New Comedy have repeatedly been collected.
Democritus, perhaps the most eminent of Plato's con tempo- see index, s.v.
raries, and the antithesis of Plato in philosophy, is never men¬
tioned by Plato, and is extant only in fragments. The relation of
Plato's thought to his is glanced at in the notes on the Timaeus Infra, p. 617
and will be more fully considered elsewhere. At this point a few
words on Lysias, Isocrates, Xenophon, and Antisthenes will
suffice.

The orator Lysias had few general ideas, and could interest
Plato only as a prominent writer and teacher during the years
of Plato's early manhood. Later critics commended the purity
of his Attic prose style, its freedom from overbold metaphor and
unusual or poetical words, and contrasted unfavorably in these
respects the exuberance of the dithyrambic or mimetic passages
of Plato who drew on all the resources of the Greek language
and employed any word or turn of phrase that suited his pur¬
pose and mood. They also took note of Lysias’ portrayal of
character, his ethos as they termed it, his skill in putting into the
mouth of his clients speeches that would seem to an Athenian
jury the natural expression of their personalities and honest
sentiments. Quite fanciful is the modern notion that Plato's
banishment of mimetic poetry from his ideal state would require
him in consistency to disapprove of Lysias on this account. But

32

WHAT PLATO SAID

Infra, pp. 199, 204
Infra, pp. i8sff.

Peace 41 ff., 75 ff.
Areop. 24 £f., 291!.,

a 39~49«

Areop 15 ff.

Areop. 46-51
Antid. 285-87
Infra, p. 346
On Gorg. 461 C
Gorg. 517 B ff.,
519 A

Phil. 146, Peace
37, 94-ioi,

79 ff-

Peace 1 21-31
Gorg. 503 C ff.,
515 D ff., 517 B

Rep. 496 D
On Apol. 31 C ff.
Isoc. Phil. 81-82
Antid. 150-51
Panath. 9-1 1
Isoc. passim and
Bus. 49 with
Rep. 495 CD

Isoc. Nic. 30, 44,
Hel. 54, Soph.
16, and passim

Isoc. Soph,
passim

he was entirely willing to parody and satirize the Philistine
banality and poverty of ideas of the successful lawyer and popu¬
lar logograph. This he does in the Phaedrus , probably written
soon after Lysias' death, and later than the first book of the
Republic of which the scene is laid in the house of Lysias' more
philosophic brother, Polemarchus. Plow he does this is told in
our analysis of the Phaedrus. Possible references to epideictic
writings of “Lysias" may be found in the Menexenus.

Isocrates was about ten years Plato's senior and survived
him nearly ten years. They lived side by side in fourth-century
Athens as rival writers and heads of competing schools for fifty
or forty years. They of course knew each other, and of course
their writings contain many passages which may be interpreted
as allusions, plagiarisms, or coincidences. They were both mod¬
erate conservatives, both idealized the good old times and the
constitution of the Fathers. But Plato left their date undefined,
while Isocrates assigned them to the generation that repelled
the Persian invasion. Both deplored and satirized the relaxed
morals of the younger generation. But Plato associated this de¬
generacy with far-reaching philosophies of negation. Both dep¬
recated an imperialistic policy for Athens, but Isocrates late in
life and perhaps mainly in imitation of Plato. Both were severe
critics of the new radical democracy, the “last" democracy of
Aristotle, and its politicians. But Isocrates dates it from the
post-Periclean demagogues, while Plato traces licentious poli¬
tics and imperialism in principle back to Pericles and Themisto-
cles, though he admits that they were abler men than the politi¬
cians of his day. Both while celebrating the superiority of the
quiet intellectual life were perhaps a little envious of the prom¬
inence and power of the practical politician and the successful
teacher of rhetoric and writer for the courts. And both apolo¬
gized explicitly or by implication for their own abstinence from
practical affairs and their political incapacity. Both praised
something that they called “philosophy" above all other pur¬
suits, and deplored its low estimate among the majority of
mankind. Both had a doctrine of what they called “ideas."
Both contrasted unfavorably the methods, the professions, and
the teachings of the Sophists with their own, and tried to show
that the subjects taught in their schools tended to develop the

THE LIFE OF PLATO

33

whole man, both mind and character. Both were led by their
criticism of contemporary life and politics to general reflections
on the philosophy and history of Greek civilization. Both
agree in the expression of many commonplaces of Greek reflec¬
tion and current ideas of their own day. To sum it up in modern
and Victorian terms, we may conceive Isocrates as a less
learned and less robust Macaulay who neglected the paragraph
and wrote long sentences; Plato is a combination of Arnold,

Mill, Martineau, Renan, and Ruskin — plus genius. These re¬
semblances are of course subject to many qualifications. When
two say the same thing it is not the same. Plato speaks from a
higher intellectual and, whatever his personal character may
have been, a more ideal moral plane than Isocrates, who even
when he tries to edify perpetually slips back into the moral vul¬
garity of a consciously utilitarian ethics. Plato’s genius, his
imagination, the intensity of his ethical feeling, his philosophic
range and subtlety, impart a distinctly different tone and color¬
ing even to commonplaces. And his philosophy proper is quite
beyond Isocrates’ reach and comprehension. For this very rea¬
son Isocrates perhaps appeals to those minds that, from Aristotle
down, find Plato’s idealism overstrained and his metaphysics
unmeaning or oversubtle.

Isocrates never mentions Plato by name. There is one ex¬
plicit mention of Isocrates by Plato, the well-known passage at
the end of the Phaedrus. There, after recommending to Lysias
the lesson of the dialogue, that philosophy and dialectics are in¬
dispensable to the thinker and the writer, Socrates is summoned
by Phaedrus to give him a message for the fair Isocrates. Socra¬
tes, who is here, as Cicero points out, the mouthpiece of Plato’s orator 13. (42)
vaticinium ex eventu , declares that Isocrates surpasses Lysias in
natural talent and in a certain nobility of temper, and that as
time goes on he will make other writers in the field which now
occupies him look like children and may even be led by some
divine impulse to higher things, for there is a certain philosophy
in his nature. At the dramatic date of the dialogue when Soc¬
rates could converse with Phaedrus, Isocrates was still young.

But if the Phaedrus , as now generally believed, was written
about 380 or somewhat later, Isocrates was fifty-six or fifty-
seven years old when Plato condescendingly, or, it might be

34

WHAT PLATO SAID

argued^ ironically, bade him cultivate his philosophic vein, per¬
haps in compliment to his recently published Panegyricus , per¬
haps with a touch of satire on his use of “philosophy,” perhaps
in partial agreement with his “Against the Sophists.” However
that may be, Cicero regards the passage as an expression of
Plato's sincere and definitive opinion. Cicero had learned from
Isocrates many of the secrets of the ample, slightly florid, peri¬
odic, rhythmic prose which he transmitted to Bossuet and Burke
and the modern world. And in reply to those critics of his day
who, calling themselves Atticists, disparaged this style as Asiat-
orator i3. (42) ic, Cicero replies in a formula which he elsewhere uses of Plato's
Tusc. 1. 17. (39) faith in immortality, that if his admiration for Isocrates is an
error he prefers to err with Plato.

There is in fact no evidence of hostility between Plato and
Diog. l. hi. 8 Isocrates, but there is an anecdote of a friendly conversation on
poetry at a villa outside of Athens. But friends or friendly ac¬
quaintances who on the whole respect one another may be pro¬
voked by rivalry or fundamental differences of opinion and
Gorg. 463 a 7 taste to occasional sharp expressions of dissent. In the Gorgias
unity, n. 596 Plato wittily parodies a phrase that occurs in Isocrates' tract
soph. 17 against the Sophists, and the Phaedrus itself parodies a sentence
Phnedr. 276A 7-8 Qf tjle Panegyricus, and a notable sentence of the Republic
Rep. 498 de clothes a reply to skeptical critics of the ideal state in the dress
of an elaborate parody of the Gorgian and Isocratean figures of
parisosis and paromoiosis. Such pinpricks need not imply en¬
mity. Matthew Arnold was not an enemy of Frederick Harrison
when he parodied with damnable iteration Harrison's demand
for a philosophy with principles coherent and interdependent.
Fie did not hate Herbert Spencer when he wittily juxtaposed
Spencer's ponderous definition of evolution with Homer's little
saying, “wide is the range of words,” or the Bishop Wilber-
force when he held up to incessant ridicule a proposal to do
something for the Godhead of the Eternal Son. More serious is
the apparent retort to Isocratean criticism at the end of the
infra, pp. 167-68 Eutfiydemus . There an anonymous critic whose description and
language suggest Isocrates, and who had censured Socrates for
deigning to debate with eristic mountebanks, is condescendingly
approved as one who does the best he can but is bidden to know
his place. He is an ineffective intermediate and compromise be-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

35

tween the philosopher and the statesman and inferior to both.
If there was ever any bitterness of feeling between Isocrates and
Plato, it probably found lodgment in the inferior or, at any
rate, more commonplace mind of Isocrates, who may have felt
the condescensions of Plato hard to bear, and may have been
envious of the immense prestige won by such masterpieces as
the Gorgias and the Republic . At any rate, there are many
passages in Isocrates’ writings which may be used to illustrate
his personal feelings about his greater rival, without pressing
them into the service of any theory of the chronology of the
Platonic dialogues. The more obvious of these passages have
repeatedly been collected. But there are many others which
bring out the essential opposition between two competing ideas
of culture and methods of the higher education. There are also
many passages in Isocrates that point to imitation or even
plagiarism of Plato, and a few passages in Plato that seem to
mark him as the debtor.

Xenophon’s lifetime nearly coincided with Plato’s. But their
experience of life had little in common except Xenophon’s boy¬
hood and his brief contact with Socrates. They were contrasted
types: Plato the lifelong student, teacher, thinker, artist, ideal¬
ist; Xenophon the military adventurer in youth and later the
exile, the country-gentleman, the hunter, the keeper of dogs and
horses, the amateur author. His voluminous writings contain
the suggestion at least of most ideas, apart from metaphysics
and technical science, that were current in Socratic circles and
the literature of Plato’s time. He was, like Isocrates, a common¬
place but receptive mind, and like Isocrates may serve to illus¬
trate the level of fourth-century thought and the ideas current
among Plato’s more intelligent contemporaries. He cannot have
influenced Plato much, if any. He probably wrote nothing be¬
fore the year 394, at which time Plato had written probably
most of the minor dialogues and perhaps the Protagoras , Meno ,
and Gorgias . His Symposium is obviously later than Plato’s and
imitates it. He often repeats, and in his Memorabilia and his
Oeconomicus he puts into the mouth of Socrates his own favorite
ideas about discipline, hardihood, industry, thrift, temperance,
the management of men, knowing how to rule and be ruled, and

WHAT PLATO SAID

Laws 694 C

Cf. Ale. 1. 121 Aff.

36

other commonplaces of Greek ethics, politics, and the conduct
of life. His Cyropaedia , or Education and Life of the Perfect
King, concluding with a discourse on the immortality of the
soul, was written long after the publication of the Republic and
the Phaedo . Plato’s remark in the Laws that Cyrus had no real
education may be a contemptuous allusion to it. Plato may
have looked the book over. He would have found there little to
his purpose except some imitations of himself and a convenient
compendium of many of Xenophon’s favorite notions: about
the art of ruling men, the art of winning friends by complai¬
sance, gifts, tact, and other devices ; the art of the general, tactics
and strategy, how to make war support itself, how to win the
favor of the soldiers by tact, good humor, democratic fellow¬
ship, timely jests, sharing their labors and hardships and re¬
membering their names; how to enforce discipline and obedi¬
ence, how to stimulate their zeal by praise, rivalry, contests, and
prizes; the necessity of keeping fit by exercise, training, hunting,
working off your food, and remembering that hunger is the best
sauce.

As a fellow-disciple of Socrates he must have been known to
Plato. His Socratic writings borrow much from Plato. He could
not possibly have remembered after so many years of cam¬
paigning the conversations of Socrates that he claims to have
heard and to report verbatim. It can even be argued that he
was wholly dependent upon the dialogues of Plato and other
Socratics for all ideas except a few of his own favorite common¬
places that he puts in the mouth of Socrates.

There is then no evidence, and there is little probability that
Plato was influenced by Xenophon. He may at the most have
got some ideas from Xenophon about the Persian Empire and
have looked over Hellenica I in preparation for the writing of
the Menexenus . The fact that neither Plato nor Xenophon men¬
tions the other led to the surmise in antiquity that they were un¬
friendly and modern monographs have been written on their
supposed enmity. There is no evidence for this unless we accept
as such the rivalry implied in their both having written Socratic
discourses and apologies for Socrates, and both having described
a symposium in which Socrates took part.

There is an enormous and still growing literature about the

THE LIFE OF PLATO

37

Memorabilia , the Apology , and the Symposium of Xenophon,
both in themselves and in their relation to Socrates and Plato.
The genuineness of the Xenophontic Apology and the authen¬
ticity of its report of Socrates’ words have been fruitful themes
of controversy. The Memorabilia has been analyzed into parts
supposed to have been written at different dates, and its sources
in contemporary or earlier literature have been traced or con¬
jectured. It has been combined with arbitrarily selected pas¬
sages from the Platonic dialogues to construct a body of doctrine
and a system of philosophy for Socrates. All the resources of
philology have been brought to bear on the question of priority
between the two symposia. Some of the parallels between the
writings of Xenophon and the minor or Socratic dialogues of
Plato will be cited in the notes on the analyses of those dia¬
logues. All we need to observe here is the broad probability
that Xenophon, not Plato, was the borrower.

A fourth notable contemporary of Plato, Antisthenes, disciple
of Socrates and Gorgias, author of many lost works, prominent
character in Xenophon’s Symposium , teacher or Guru of Di¬
ogenes, and so in a sense founder of the so-called Cynic school,
was undoubtedly a significant personage in the intellectual life
of fourth-century Athens. We know him only from a few anec¬
dotes and the 129 fragments collected in Mullach. Some schol¬
ars think of him as the founder of the Cynic school; others say
Diogenes was the founder; and still others deny that there was
any Cynic philosophy. In any case it is uncritical to generalize
guesses about Antisthenes’ ideas by referring them to the “Cyn¬
ics.” He was of humble parentage and the antithesis in tem¬
perament and education of the aristocratic, cultured, refined,
and polished Plato. In spite of his studies with Gorgias, he
seems to have been a somewhat rough, crude, uncultured per¬
sonage of the type that the Greeks characterized as “late learn¬
ers,” and is perhaps so designated by Plato. Plis philosophy
seems to have been in the main practical ethics with occasional
subordinate or polemical excursions into other fields as logic or
Homeric criticism. He represents one aspect of the Platonic
Socrates, the frugality, the simple life, the hardiness, the endur¬
ance, the contempt for pleasure as such, the self-control. He is

Cf. infra, p. 462

On Crat. 433 B

38

WHAT PLATO SAID

Symp. 220 B
Cic. Tusc. V. 32

Infra, p. 139
Diog. L. VI. 3

Xen. Symp. III. 8,
IV. 34 ff.

Xen. Symp. V

Cf. infra, p. 161

Ar. Met. 1043 b
24-26

Ar. Met. 1024632

Infra, p. 570

the embodiment of the Socrates who went barefoot in the snow,
of the Socrates of the anecdote who said at the fair, “How many
things there are here that I do not want.” Many sayings in this
sense are attributed to him. And some of the fragments antici¬
pate the later Stoic and Cynic exaggerations of the ethical para¬
doxes of the Gorgias. The extreme instance in this kind is “Let
me be mad rather than feel pleasure.” In Xenophon’s Sympo¬
sium he divides the role of the jester with Philippos and proves
himself the most rich because he has the fewest wants as Socrates
proves himself most handsome because his snub nose is more
useful than a Grecian nose. This again is only an exaggeration
and humorous development of a Platonic thought, the prayer
of Socrates at the close of the Phaedrus: “May I deem the wise
man the rich man.” Later moralists, as Epictetus and Dio
Chrysostomos, quote from him many edifying sentiments.
There is no evidence of any systematic ethical philosophy. Epic¬
tetus quotes him as approving the study of logic as a protection
against fallacy. The statement that the beginning of education
is the apprehension of the meanings of words may refer to the
preacher’s development or “improvement” of all the implica¬
tions of moral terms and not to the synonyms of a Prodicus or
the definitions of a Socrates. A number of works are attributed
to him whose titles seem to refer to questions of logic and dialec¬
tic. These works were apparently negative and eristic. Aristot¬
le explicitly attributes to him the doctrine that definitions are
mere verbiage, that contradiction is impossible, and that only
identical propositions are allowable. Everything has its own
proper logos; a speaker either assigns that logos to a thing or he
does not. If he does, there can be no error, if he does not, he is
not speaking of the thing. There is no meeting of minds and
there can be no contradiction. Plato has two or three contemp¬
tuous references to late learners who have grown old repeating
these and similar doctrines with great satisfaction to them¬
selves. Grote, as is his wont, assumes that Antisthenes pro¬
pounded these paradoxes in order to draw attention to his in¬
vestigation of serious philosophical problems. Pie offers no evi¬
dence and there is none. There are, as was to be expected, a few
ideas in the fragments which coincide with thoughts of Plato.
There are several propositions and paradoxes which Plato em-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

39

phatically contradicts and to which he may or may not intend
a reference. On this basis ingenious scholars, beginning with
Schleiermacher, have erected a vast fabric of hypotheses about
the relations of Plato and Antisthenes. He is reported to have
been angered by Plato’s refutation of him in an argument and
to have retaliated by a scurrilous and obscenely punning pam¬
phlet. There are other anecdotes that testify to a distaste which
we might have assumed from the nature of the two men. Plato
is supposed to have retaliated more subtly by covert disparag¬
ing allusions. Diimmler and Joel and their emulators discover
such allusions and aliases for Antisthenes throughout the dia¬
logues. Antisthenes is of course the late learner of the Sophist
who grows old affirming that predication is impossible. He is
the sophistical mountebank of the Euthydemus. He is the wild
etymologist of the Cratylus. He is the Thracian Abigail of
Theaet . 174 ff. He is the author of the interpretation of the
myth of Prometheus and Heracles parodied in the myth of Pla¬
to’s Protagoras . He is the Protagoras of the Protagoras who, like
Antisthenes, opposes hedonism. Antisthenes was apparently a
nominalist. Lie admitted the qualified object but not the qual¬
ity. Or, as a famous anecdote puts it, he could see a man but
could not see humanity. Here again Grote apologizes for him,
and even compares him with Aristotle, since both rejected the
Platonic ideas. But, as I shall repeatedly argue throughout this
work, the Platonic theory of ideas is both a metaphysical doc¬
trine and a practical affirmation of the necessity of accepting
and using general and abstract ideas and words. The nominal¬
ism that rejects the metaphysical doctrine is one thing, and the
cruder nominalism of the half-educated in every age that rejects
the indispensable service to thought of abstraction and generali¬
zation is another. Plato is opposed to nominalism in both senses,
but he is aware of the distinction. A similar consideration dis¬
poses of all attempted rehabilitations of Antisthenes’ other logi¬
cal paradoxes. They repudiate indispensable conventions and
adjustments and compromises of language and thought, and it
cannot be shown that they were intended to raise serious philo¬
sophical issues, though any fallacy or quip may be said to do
that. It is not strange that Plato grew impatient of them and
spoke harshly of those who used them to block the path of con-

Soph. 251 B

Infra, p. 13 1

Zeller 295

Infra, p. 574

Unity, p. 50

4o

WHAT PLATO SAID

structive thought. Antisthenes was also a student of rhetoric.
He is reputed to have said, “If a boy is destined to live with
gods, teach him philosophy; if with men, rhetoric.” We have
not enough evidence to determine the nature of the rhetoric
that he professed or taught. The extant fragments show that he
himself was endowed with a homely wit and could point his
ideas and his gibes with vivid imagery and caustic epigram.

At this point the story of Plato’s life becomes inextricably in¬
volved with the question of the genuineness of the some thirteen
epistles attributed to him, which in themselves, or through Plu¬
tarch, Cicero, and others who used them as unimpeachable his¬
torical authorities, are almost the only source of our knowledge
of the details of his three visits to Sicily. Antiquity accepted as
genuine most of these letters, and the use of them by Cicero and
Plutarch left little doubt in the minds of the majority of Renais¬
sance scholars, though some were skeptical. In the Platonic lit¬
erature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
they are generally quoted as of equal authority with the dia¬
logues. The not entirely critical Latin dissertation of Karsten
in the year 1 864 discredited them with a majority of philologians
for a generation or two. Jowett takes their spuriousness for
granted. Chaignet writing in 1871 says (p. 99) that the most
that can be said in their favor is to attribute to Plato’s nephew
Speusippos those that exhibit an intimate knowledge of the
p.483 philosopher’s life. Zeller to the end rejected them all. The his¬
torian Grote, however, characteristically accepted them all, and
thirty or forty years later the historian Edward Meyer through
his writings and the dissertations of his pupils or followers was
chiefly influential in bringing about the present prevailing fash¬
ion which accepts most of them. There is no a priori presump¬
tion sufficiently strong to decide the question. In post-Platonic
and post-Aristotelian literature there are abundant examples
of false attributions and forgeries, both of letters and of trea¬
tises or dialogues. Arguments based on slight historical discrep¬
ancies can always be explained away. Plato’s memory may have
failed, or again the forger may have been well informed. Ap¬
parent quotations from the dialogues may be taken as an old
man’s repetition of himself, or as the reminiscences of an imi-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

4i

tator. The argument that no equal number of pages in the un¬
disputed writings contain so few memorable sentences would be
challenged. Many critics profess deep admiration for the let¬
ters. The differences in style between the longer letters and
Plato's later works are not sufficient to carry absolute convic¬
tion to most minds. The argument that the general tone of the
letters is incompatible with what we infer from Plato's undis¬
puted writings was probably his own moral character, and cer¬
tainly his moral tact, seems conclusive to the present writer, as
will be more fully explained later. But with many critics it car- infra, PP. 53-54
ries no weight whatever. As far back as 1427, Leonardo Bruni,
in the Preface to his translation of the epistles, finds their chief
value in the fact that they present to us a more real and at the
same time a nobler Plato than the ironical and satirical author
of feigning dialogues. Even Bruni, however, rejects, as unwor¬
thy of Plato, the thirteenth epistle, which deals in a rather pic-
ayunish spirit with the petty details of Plato's business rela¬
tions with Dionysius. Most recent critics dismiss this objection
and all arguments based on the moral tone of the epistles, with
the remark that it is natural to expect that a man's formal writ¬
ings will display his character and his ideals in a more favorable
light than his personal letters do.

The inclination of historians to accept the letters is under¬
standable. They need them in their business. The letters help
to fill out with picturesque detail the bare outline of Plato's life.

Our acceptance or rejection of some of them, however, is not of
so great historical importance as it might seem. The two longer
and better letters, if not written by Plato himself, must have
been composed not later than a generation or two after his
death by some Platonist who must have had access to the facts
and who was himself so steeped in Plato's later writings that he
could plausibly imitate their style. The disbeliever, then, in the
Platonic authorship of these letters may still use them in his
account of the Sicilian episode in Plato's life. He will merely ex¬
press himself with a little more doubt about some of the details,
and will reject all statements, most frequent in the inferior let¬
ters, that attribute to Plato superstition, the affectation of a infra, P. 607
secret and mysterious doctrine, and expressions of crude vanity

42

WHAT PLATO SAID

324 c ff.

324 B

325 As
325 BC

325 CD
326 A

326 AB
Cf. Rep. 473 CD

326 B

327 A
327 B 6

327 DE

327 D s

328 A 7

328 C
Rep. 502 B 4

328 C 2

328 C 6
328 D 3 ff.

329 B 8

329 C

or moral pettiness that are incompatible with what we other¬
wise know of his character, perhaps, and certainly of his taste.

The story of the letters then, with some added touches or con¬
firmations from Plutarch's Life of Lion and other sources, is
substantially this: In 388, in the course of his travels in South¬
ern Italy, Plato visited the court of Dionysius the Elder, tyrant
of Syracuse, where he made the acquaintance of Dion, brother-
in-law of Dionysius, who was very quick of apprehension,
and who accepted his teaching and his ideals more eagerly
and enthusiastically than any young man whom he had ever
met. The long seventh epistle, ostensibly written in 353, after
the death of Dion, opens with a plausible description of Plato's
state of mind at the time of this visit. He had been, as was
to be expected of a young man of his position and family,
ambitious of a political career. But the conduct of his own
relatives, friends, and acquaintances in the revolutions of 41 1
and 404-403 disgusted him with the oligarchical party. And
the judicial murder of Socrates by the restored democracy
ripened the conviction that all existing governments were irre¬
mediably corrupt and that nothing less than a miracle, or, as he
was later to put it in his Republic , a regimen of philosophers,
could redeem them. Coming to Syracuse with these ideas, he
was displeased with the life of the court and the proverbially
luxurious Sicilian table, but laid the foundation for all that was
to come by his conversion of Dion. On the death of Dionysius
the Elder and the succession of Dionysius the Younger twenty
years later, Plato, then sixty years old and widely known as a
writer and head of the Academy, received an importunate re¬
quest from Dion urging him to come to Syracuse and not to let
slip a unique opportunity of realizing some of the social and po¬
litical ideals which they shared.

The epistle supplements this appeal by Plato's own reflections
on the opportunity for realizing his ideals by persuading one
man only, and of escaping the taunt that he is a theorist and
man of words incapable of action. This stream of thought issues
in a prosopopoeia of Dion, after supposed defeat and exile, bit¬
terly reproaching Plato for having failed him. Plato found the
court of Syracuse split into factions. At the end of four months
Dion was exiled on a charge of treason, and his friends, includ¬
ing Plato, trembled for their lives. Dionysius, however, re-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

43

assured Plato and urged him to remain. He feared the discredit 329 d
of an open breach with the great philosopher and was genuinely 329 d5
attracted to him though bitterly jealous of his preference for 330 ab
Dion. But he was not willing to make the sacrifices demanded 330 b
by the philosophic life.

At this point the story is interrupted by an essay on the
principles of sound and helpful counsel, and its application
in the counsels which Plato has to offer to the friends and
kin of Dion in the crisis after Dion's death. The narra¬
tive, resumed in 337 E, tells of Plato's departure from Syr- 338 ab
acuse and Dionysius' promise to summon him to Syracuse
again and restore Dion as soon as a petty war in which
he was engaged should leave him leisure. In fact, the story 338 b
continues, Dionysius sent the invitation to Plato, but requested
Dion to wait another year. Plato pleaded his age and the 338 c 4
non-fulfilment of the agreement, but Dion was insistent, re- 338 e 5
ports of Dionysius' devotion to philosophy came pouring in 338 b 4-5
from Sicily, and finally he received an urgent letter from Di- 339 b 5
onysius himself with further assurances about Dion and con- 339 a?
firmatory letters from Archytas and other friends of Plato in 340 a 7
Tarentum. So with many misgivings Plato embarked on his third 342-450
Sicilian journey. But before the letter narrates it, another digres¬
sion explains the manner of testing a genuine philosophic voca¬
tion and goes on to expound the reasons why the deepest
truths of philosophy can never be set forth in writing as Di¬
onysius pretended to have done. The narrative is resumed in
345 C, and, whether authentic or not, is a good story. Dionysius
did not fulfil his agreements, but on various pretexts with¬
held a large part of Dion's revenues. In his eagerness to de- 345 cd
tain the reluctant Plato, however, he proposed a compromise. 345 de
Dion should receive his revenues on condition of continuing 346Bff.
to reside in the Peloponnesus and giving Plato and his friends
as sureties that he would not plot to overthrow Dionysius.

But Plato is to remain in Syracuse a year before the agree- 346C7
ment is put into effect. A long pay'ole interieure of Plato bal- 346e
ances the alternatives open to him, and terminates in a decision 347 c
to remain. So he stayed on like a bird ever yearning to fly cf8phaedr.
from its cage, while Dionysius was ever contriving to shoo 24907
him back. A revolt of the mercenaries against the reduction of 348 ab

44

WHAT PLATO SAID

their pay was attributed by Dionysius to the machinations of
Heraclides, who fled to avoid arrest. Theodotes, his connexion,
consulted Plato, whom he found walking “in the garden” where

348 cd Dionysius had assigned to him a residence. In the presence of

Plato, Dionysius was persuaded to promise that if Theodotes
agreed to produce Heraclides to answer the charges, he should be
immune in the interim, and that if after his apology it seemed
good to banish him from Sicily, he should depart unharmed and

348 e in possession of his property. But on the next day Theodotes

and Eurybios came to Plato with the news that the soldiers
were in pursuit of Heraclides. They hurried to Dionysius; Pla¬
to, speaking for them, tells Dionysius that they are afraid lest
harm come to Heraclides in violation of yesterday’s agreements.
Dionysius, red with wrath, looks Plato full in the eye with the

349 b s vultus instayitis tyranni and replies : “With you I made no agree¬

ment big or little.” “Nay, but you did though,” Plato answers,

349 c and turns away and departs. Thereafter Heraclides escaped in¬

to the Carthaginian dominion, and Dionysius, on the pretext
that the women are to celebrate a religious festival in the gar-

349 cd den, sends Plato away from the protection of the Acropolis to

live with one Archedemus outside. There he is warned by Athe-

350 a nians among Dionysius’ petty officers that he is regarded with

hostility by the soldiers and is in danger of his life. In these

350 ab straits Plato sends word to Archytas and his friends in Taren-

tum who dispatch a vessel ostensibly with an embassy and in¬
duce Dionysius to allow Plato to depart with money for the
journey, but with no further assurance about the property of
350 bc Dion. Plato arrives at Olympia in the summer of 360, and re¬
ports the state of affairs to Dion, whom he finds there in attend¬
ance on the festival. To Dion’s request that Plato and his
friends join him in his preparations to avenge himself upon Di¬
onysius, Plato replies that the friends are free to do as they
350 d please, but that he himself must be excused. He is too old for
further strife, but he will offer his mediation when they are
350 c 6 ff. ready to receive it. By Dion’s own request he has shared the
hearth and table of Dionysius, who, in spite of apparently good
350 d 5 grounds for suspicion, spared his life. So spoke Plato, hating the
whole business of his Sicilian wanderings and misfortunes. The
letter concludes with a page of pathetic and almost eloquent

THE LIFE OF PLATO

45

moral reflections on the fate of Dion, quite Platonic in tone, but
hopelessly confused in style, if the text is not corrupt, and per¬
haps overloaded with Platonic reminiscences. The beginning of 350 e
all the mischief was the confiscation of Dion’s property. With¬
out that Plato could have held him down and prevented all the
disasters that followed. Dion’s failure and death cannot be im¬
puted to any fault of his own. The best pilot may fail to 351 d 5
weather a hurricane. Dion was aware of the baseness of many
of his associates. But he could not be expected to foresee the 351 de
height of folly, turpitude, and sensuality that they achieved,
and so he tripped and fell, enveloping Sicily in infinite sorrow.

Whether Plato wrote these words or not they irresistibly recall
the beautiful epigram which we may, if we please, believe that
he did write (for who else could have written it?) at the age of
seventy-five.

For Hecuba and Troy the fates had spun
The web of tears and sorrow from their birth;

For thee, O Dion, when the prize was won
They spilt our cup of hope upon the earth.

A people mourns now where thou best low,

Dion, whose love once set my soul aglow.

The antithesis between Hecuba and Dion may appear strained.

But Hecuba and the Trojan women were for the readers of Eu¬
ripides’ plays the embodiments of the sharpest pathos, and Pla¬
to, whose hopes of a philosophical government of Sicily were
blighted by Dion’s death, feels with Hamlet, What’s Hecuba
that we should weep for her? “What would they do had they
the motive and the cue for passion that I have?” The love of
which the aged Plato speaks is that so eloquently described in
the Symposium .

And if he meets in conjunction with loveliness of form a beautiful, generous Ihelfey’s^ersion
and gentle soul, he embraces both at once and immediately undertakes to edu¬
cate the object of his love, and is inspired with an overflowing persuasion to
declare what is virtue and what he ought to be who would attain to its posses¬
sion and what are the duties which it exacts.

The story of Dion’s ill-starred expedition is related in every
history of Greece. The details do not concern the biographer of
Plato. The other epistles add only a few doubtful features to
the narrative that we have extracted from the seventh. Some

WHAT PLATO SAID

310 C ff.

311 D 6

312 D 2
3i4 B 7

3i4 D

312 Dff.

Or: Of what sort,
pray?

Rep. 490 B 7
(Loeb)

Cf. on Euthyd.
282 C

Meno 99 E

Meno 98 A
Theaet. 144 A 8
Gorg. 482 A 7

46

slight apparent contradictions with the facts stated in the sev¬
enth epistle have exercised the ingenuity of historians in the
controversy about the genuineness of the epistles. They interest
us only in so far as they afford occasion for divergent judgments
of Plato's mind and character.

The second epistle is intended to illustrate the interval be¬
tween the second and third, or last, Sicilian journeys. It begins
with a sophistic disquisition on the companionships of kings and
men of letters, and the need that Plato and Dionysius should
manage their friendship rightly if they have any concern for
their reputation with posterity. It goes on to speak of a
“sphere" and of Plato's secret doctrines which are not to be
committed to writing, and concludes with a few commissions
and recommendations. To show the difficulty of arguing with
anyone who believes it to be a genuine composition of the author
of the Republic and Symposium , I will translate partly the pas¬
sage about the sphere.

The sphere is not right. But Archedemus will explain it when he arrives.
And also he must most certainly expound to you this other matter which is
more precious and divine and concerning which you sent to me, being at a
loss. For you say, according to his report, that the nature of the primary or
the first has not been sufficiently explained to you. I must accordingly declare
it to you in riddles in order that, if this letter come to be lost in the furrows
of land or sea, he who reads it may not understand. For thus the matter
stands. Concerning the king of all, all things are, and for his sake are all
things, and that is the cause of all things good and fair. But secondarily, with
regard to secondary things and thirdly with regard to tertiary. Now the soul
of man is fain to learn of them of what sort they are, looking to the things that
are akin to it, of which none is adequate. So now concerning the king and the
things whereof I spoke it is nothing of the kind — but after this the soul says —
but what, pray, does it say? This, son of Dionysius and Doris, is the question
which is the cause of all our trouble. Or rather, the travail and yearning of the
bowels in the soul concerning it. From which if a man shall not be relieved he
never, never will attain to the real truth. Now you told me “in the garden”
under the laurels that you yourself had hit upon this thought and that it was
your discovery. And I replied that if this seemed to you so you would have
relieved me of a long discussion. But that I had never yet met with anybody
else who had discovered it, but my great labor had been on this point. Now
you perhaps heard it from somebody or maybe you were impelled in this
direction by grace divine. And then, supposing that you had the proofs se¬
curely, you did not bind and make them fast, but they dart capriciously now
this way, now that, to whatever strikes your fancy, but it is nothing of the
kind.

THE LIFE OF PLATO

47

This is a fair rendering of the passage, and I fear there is, after
all, little common ground of argument between those who im¬
mediately recognize that Plato could never have written this
mystical theosophic drivel and those who think that they can
force an edifying and Platonic interpretation upon it. If we
must interpret, the sphere might be an allusion to an orrery or
sphere intended to demonstrate the Platonic system of the heav¬
ens, such as was actually constructed by Theon of Smyrna, but
probably did not exist in Plato’s time. The nature of the first,
the second, and the third cannot be, as has been sometimes
thought, a reference to the Christian Trinity. There are phrases
in the Timaeus or Philebus out of which the sentence could have
been patched up, and there are various ways in which a meta¬
physical trinity of ultimate principles can be discovered in Pla¬
to, e.g., the demiourgos , the soul, the world, or the idea, the
copy, and the material in which the copy is impressed. But it is
really naive to interpret a passage of this sort further or to insist
on one’s guesses as to what the author of the mystification may
have had in mind.

The third epistle is supposed to be written in 358— 357, not
long before Dion’s expedition, and is partly intended to defend
Plato against the charge of participation in Dion’s preparations
to overthrow the tyranny. It begins with a sophistical disquisi¬
tion on the preferability of tv irparTav, “farewell,” to
“rejoice,” as the salutation in a letter, and goes on to discuss
Dionysius’ complaint that Plato, after discouraging his inten¬
tion to colonize Sicilian towns and give constitutional govern¬
ment to Syracuse, now co-operates with Dion in his endeavor to
overthrow Dionysius by his own policies. Plato answers first
that he did not meddle with Dionysius’ political affairs further
than to give some moderate attention to the proemia of the
laws. The letter then recites the story of the second Sicilian
journey mainly in agreement with and probably in imitation of
the seventh epistle. The letter adds in conclusion a conversation
“in the garden,” in which Dionysius asks Plato if he remembers
advising him to liberate Syracuse and colonize Sicilian towns.
“Was that all?” asks Plato. “You bade me first be educated
myself.” “Well remembered,” says Plato, like Socrates in the di¬
alogues. “Educated in geometry, was it not?” sneered Diony-

315 DE

316 A

Cf. on Laws
71S CD

316 Cff.

319 A ff.

319 B 5
319 C 3

48

WHAT PLATO SAID

sius; to which Plato deigned no reply at the time, but now in the
letter protests against the slander. The whole is so confusedly
expressed that it is impossible to say whether the condition
precedent of beneficent political action was to be geometry or
on Gorg. 491 d that moral education in self-control which the Socrates of the
Gorgicis also requires of those who would govern others. The
passage is generally taken to mean that Plato, applying the
principles of his Republic , insisted on geometry first, and on this,
assuming the genuineness of the letter, Grote and others base
the charge that Plato showed himself an impractical and pedan¬
tic idealist when confronted with the realities of practical poli¬
tics. The letter is obviously spurious. And all opinions about
the wisdom or unwisdom displayed by Plato in his relations with
Dionysius are pure guesswork or deductions from the predeter¬
mined estimate of Plato's character and judgment.

The fourth letter, also an obvious forgery, is an exhortation
addressed to Dion after the overthrow of Dionysius and before
Symp. 178 d 1-2 the death of Heraclides. It reminds him in the words of the
Symposium of his ambition for honorable eminence, bids him
excel all others as men surpass children, warns him that the eyes
of all the world are upon him and he must make “back num¬
bers" of the famous Lycurgus and Cyrus, and closes with a rec¬
ommendation to cultivate affability since self-will dwells with
solitude.

The fifth epistle is a sophistic trifle recommending the coun¬
sels of one Euphraeus to Perdiccas of Macedonia. It concludes
with what seems a confused apology for Plato's refusal to take
cf. Rep. 496 c-e part in the irremediably corrupt politics of Athens.

The sixth epistle, of uncertain but late date, addressed to
Erastus and Coriscus, pupils of Plato, and to Hermeias, the ty¬
rant of Atarneus, with whom Aristotle later took refugees too
silly for serious consideration. It has been made the basis of
many historical conjectures and fancies.

The ninth and twelfth epistles are vague, unimportant sophis¬
tic exercises addressed to Archytas. The tenth is a single mor¬
alizing sentence addressed to Aristodorus, a friend of Dion. The
eleventh, vague and verbose, and impossible for Plato, is a reply
to an unknown Leodamas who asks advice about the founding
of a colony. He is put off with evasions, commonplaces, and

THE LIFE OF PLATO

49

reminiscences of the Republic and Laws. The thirteenth epistle,
addressed to Dionysius, supposedly in the interval between the
second and third Sicilian visits, is concerned with personal and
pecuniary affairs and commissions. Its spuriousness is placed
beyond rational debate by the warning addressed to Dionysius
that sincerely meant letters of recommendation from Plato will
begin with God and less serious with gods. This perhaps makes
it superfluous to discuss the trivial details with which the forger
has tried to give verisimilitude to his invention and display his
knowledge of Athenian life. Plato compliments Dionysius on a
bon mot addressed to a “beauty” of the court. He had not only
profited, he said, by Plato’s presence, but had begun to improve
from the moment he sent for him. In furtherance of their mu¬
tual profit, Plato sends him some of his “Pythagoreia,” in which
some scholars find the Timaeus , and of his “Divisions,” a sup¬
posed reference to the Sophist and Politicus. The messenger is
one Helicon, whom Plato recommends to Archytas and Di¬
onysius, a pupil of Eudoxus and of a pupil of Isocrates. Plato
commends him as confidently as is possible when one is speak¬
ing of man, not a base but a changeable animal. Plato sends
presents and reports on his execution of various commissions.
He sends a statue of Apollo by a promising artist, Leochares,
twelve jars of sweet wine and two of honey for the boys. Pie re¬
turned to Athens too late for the stored figs, and the myrtle
berries spoiled. He took the money for these expenditures from
Leptines. In general he will make use of the funds of Dionysius
and other friends as moderately as possible. He has daughters
of his nieces to dower, and if his mother should die her tomb
would run to ten minae. And he may have other public expendi¬
tures for which he will draw on Dionysius’ funds in the hands of
Leptines, whom he commends for his zeal. In general he will
keep Dionysius informed of the disposition of everybody at
Athens toward him. An obscure and vague paragraph about
Dion is followed by an account of presents which Plato will be¬
stow on the brother of Timotheus and on the daughters of
Cebes, whom Dionysius “knows tolerably well” as an interlocu¬
tor with Simmias in the Socratic discussion about the soul. The
letter concludes with short paragraphs about four or five other

363 B 5

360 AB

360 B

360 D

Epist. VII. 335 E 4
Laws 804 B 9

361 A

361 B
361 C

361 E

362 B

362 B

363 A 5

Phaedo 60 C ff.

5°

WHAT PLATO SAID

363 d 1 personages and greetings to his companion “ball players." The
style as well as the matter mark it as undoubtedly spurious.

Epistles I, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, being universally
recognized as spurious, and insignificant, there remains for con¬
sideration only the eighth epistle. The eighth, like the seventh,
purports to be written after the death of Dion, and likewise is
addressed to his kinsmen and friends. It offers them with some
variations and additions in detail, substantially the same con¬
ciliatory and moral admonitions and counsels of moderation as
the seventh, but unaccompanied by the personal narrative and
the digression on philosophy that attends them there. There is
little to take exception to in the Greek, and the main reason for
doubting its genuineness is the excess and the abruptness of the
Platonic reminiscences. The moral eloquence of the last three
pages might almost be an extract from the Laws .

Of the last twenty years of Plato's life we know nothing.
Philologians try to fill the gap by conjectures as to the composi¬
tion and sequence of his later dialogues, by the continuing influ¬
ence on his mind and mood of his Sicilian experiences, by his
personal relations with Aristotle and other pupils, by a few
doubtful anecdotes about his relations with his contemporaries
— and by the more than doubtful Aristotelian and post-Aristo¬
telian tradition of the latest phase of his philosophy. That his
mental powers remained unimpaired is sufficiently evidenced by
infra, pp. 3S5 ff. the vast work of the Laws , whose solidity of content and moral
eloquence almost reconcile the thoughtful reader to the failure
of the earlier literary charm. It exhibits perhaps, as was inevi¬
table, a few senile traits of repetition and self-praise and contains
Infra, p. 356 a few reflections on old age, but certainly presents in this respect
a remarkable contrast to the maunderings of Isocrates' Pana-
thenaicus . It shows, like the other “later" dialogues, no trace of
the mathematical mysticism, the revised metaphysics, and the
cloudy superstitions attributed to Plato by many modern critics
on the doubtful authority of obscure passages of Aristotle and
later writers. The contrary opinion derives its main support
from the prejudiced statements of modern liberals and radicals
who are outraged by a few pages of Ruskinian or Carlylean de¬
nunciations of blatant atheism, and who regard the defense of
natural theology in the tenth book as in itself a document of

THE LIFE OF PLATO

51

superstition. But apart from a very few pages of disputable
interpretation, the main body of the Laws is obviously the prod¬
uct of a wise, thoughtful, indefatigably industrious and serene,
if somewhat saddened, old age. The best comment on it is
the beautiful passage with which Jowett concludes his analysis
and takes leave of Plato:

We have seen him also in his decline, when the wings of his imagination
have begun to droop, but his experience of life remains, and he turns away
from the contemplation of the eternal to take a last sad look at human affairs.

The word “decline,” as we have already suggested, is of
doubtful application to so great a work as the Laws except from
the purely literary and popular point of view.

In any case the value of Plato’s lifework would be very slight¬
ly affected even if it were true that in the weakness of extreme
old age the noble light of his philosophy did “go out in a fog of
mystical Pythagoreanism.” It is not in the least true, however,
and the reiteration of the statement, supported only by demon¬
strable misinterpretation of a few pages of the Laws , and in the
face of explicit proof to the contrary, is not creditable to modern
scholarship. In the Timaeus Plato says that while premature or
violent death is painful, the dissolution that old age brings in
the course of nature is accompanied by more pleasure than pain.
We may please our fancies by supposing that his own end was
of this kind. He is said to have fallen into the sleep of death sur¬
rounded by friends at a wedding banquet. Cicero’s scribens est
mortuus means only that his mind was active to the end. It is
confirmed by the statement of Dionysius of Halicarnassus that
he continued to curl and comb the tresses of his dialogues to the
last. We have spoken of his will. His tomb with the inscription
that Apollo, father of Asclepius, the healer of the body, created
Plato as the physician of the soul was shown to tourists not far
from the Academy. Legend and a passage of the Phaedo asso¬
ciated him with the swan, the bird of Apollo. An epigram,
translated by Shelley, likens him rather to an eagle:

Eagle, why soarest thou above this tomb?

To what sublime and star ypaven home
Floatest thou?

I am the image of great Plato’s spirit

Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
His corpse below.

Infra, pp. 405 ff.

81 £

Cic. Cato 5
Ritter I. 161
On Phaedr. 278 D

Frazer, Pausanias
H, pp. 394-95

Frazer, Pausanias
II. PP- 394-95

WHAT PLATO SAID

52

The marble images of him preserved in our museums have little
claim to authenticity.

There would be little point in discussing Plato’s character
were it not that the most contradictory estimates have been
confidently promulgated throughout the history of Platonism.
There is nothing to go upon except a few dubious anecdotes and
the impression produced by his dialogues and by the letters
which, if genuine, could only give some of the characteristics of
his later years. His admirers clothed him with all the idealisms
that aroused their enthusiasm in his writings. He is for them the
“divine Plato,” superior to all earthly weaknesses and living
only the life of the soul, an immortal spirit sent down to the
world for the instruction, edification, and redemption of man¬
kind. Much of the distaste felt for Plato by some modern crit¬
ics, of whom Landor and De Quincey may be taken as types, is
due to the reaction against this excess, if any words of love and
appreciation for one who has brought us such gifts can be ex¬
cessive. In antiquity there were other grounds of offense dating
from his lifetime and the hostility of the pupils of Isocrates and
the Sophists and other victims of his satire. He was accused of
envy, contentiousness, pride, snobbishness, luxury, greed, plagi¬
arism. These charges, preserved by Athenaeus, Diogenes Laer¬
tius, the more rabid of the Christian Fathers, and other later
compilers of malicious gossip, have been catalogued and sifted
in modern dissertations. There is nothing to substantiate any
of them. The range of his culture, the aptness of his allusions,
and the wealth of his quotations may explain the accusation of
plagiarism. His satire and his dialectic still impress some critics
as indicative of envy, contentiousness, “Rechthaberei,” and in¬
tellectual snobbery. As an eminent American critic puts it, he
writes as if thought were a game and he knew the rules of the
game. Well, he did, as no writer before or since. But readers
who cannot brook that superiority may be displeased. As the
gentle Emerson, who was not displeased, drastically puts it:

The defect of Plato in power is only that which results inevitably from his
quality. He is intellectual in his aim; and therefore in expression literary,
mounting into heaven, diving into the pit, expounding the laws of the state,
the passion of love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the parting soul — he is

THE LIFE OF PLATO

53

literary and never otherwise. It is almost the sole deduction from the merit
of Plato that his writings have not — what is no doubt incident to this reg-
nancy of intellect in his work — the vital authority which the screams of
prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. There is an
interval; and to cohesion contact is necessary.

The personal character of the man Plato, then, we cannot
know with absolute certainty. But we do know the consistent
spiritual temper, the unfailing moral elevation of his genuine
writings, and it is permissible to believe that his personal char¬
acter cannot in any reasonable probability have declined so far
below that level as the malice of his ancient enemies affirmed, or
as we should have to admit if we believed him the author of the
second, the third, and the thirteenth epistles. But the proba¬
bility of his authorship of those epistles is not altogether a ques¬
tion of his actual personal character, but of what for lack of a
better term may be called his moral tact, his sustained spiritual
tone, and its presumptive implications. It is to be distinguished
both from the preaching and from the practice of ordinary mo¬
rality. The writer whose implications never grate on the dainti¬
est moral sense may or may not aim at explicit edification, may
or may not yield to temptations which his writings disdain or
ignore. The distinction remains, and its importance for Platonic
criticism is that the presence or absence of this quality is often
the best criterion for distinguishing the genuine works of Plato
from the spurious. The unfailing moral good taste that char¬
acterizes Plato's genuine writings is perhaps best defined by its
opposite, moral vulgarity, which is not always or necessarily
associated with serious moral obliquity. The morally vulgar
man oozes self-complacency. He boasts, threatens, condescends,
patronizes, dictates, and suspects. He “frankly” avows in him¬
self and imputes to others the lower motive, the prudential, the
calculating, the selfish, the cowardly, the jealous and envious
intention. He delights to deflate, or, as he would today say,
debunk all idealisms by a purely materialistic, economic, physi¬
cal and temperamental interpretation of conduct or behavior.
Now the Platonic Socrates, who is Plato's spokesman and repre¬
sentative, is the ideal embodiment of the opposite of all these
traits of the moral vulgarian, and in the absence of other evi¬
dence it is perhaps a reasonable presumption that Plato's own

54

WHAT PLATO SAID

character could not have presented so flagrant a contradiction
of his ideal as hostile critics and those who accept all the letters
suppose. This argument is not met by the reply that men’s pri¬
vate conduct and speech often present a humiliating contrast
with their public professions. It is not a question either of pub¬
lic professions or necessarily of personal conduct, but of a settled
habit of speech and refinement of feeling which it is hard to be¬
lieve that Plato would abandon either in letters of considerable
length and formality or in dialogues of the same general purport
and construction as the great number of those in which it never
fails.

Some readers will feel that there are two or three possible
abatements to that refinement of moral feeling which Plato’s
admirers attribute to him. The keenness of his satire, for ex¬
ample, offends some gentle spirits who would keep all literature
on the plane of lady-like afternoon-tea conversation. That is
one of the ultimate differences of taste about which it is pro¬
verbially profitless to dispute. Those who believe that satire
and parody are permissible weapons against pseudoscientific
pretenders to omniscience and self-advertisers who exploit popu¬
lar ignorance will ask only whether Plato grossly misrepresents
such personages as Thrasymachus and Polus as individuals or
as types. For this there is no evidence. The apology for the
Sophists of Grote, Mill, Gomperz, and their followers confuses
the issue, and is largely a form of propaganda for modern philos¬
ophies of utilitarianism and relativity. It is really directed not
so much against Plato as against the naivete of old-fashioned
scholars who interpreted Plato as literally as they sometimes
did the Clouds of Aristophanes, and it fails to distinguish suffi¬
ciently the different types of “Sophist.” Plato treats Gorgias,
Protagoras, and Prodicus quite respectfully. His vivacities of
criticism and touches of parody in their case do not exceed the
measure which nineteenth-century English scholars and men of
science permitted one another in what remained essentially
friendly controversy. Plato anticipates Grote and Mill in the
Rep. 492 a ff. statement that the Sophists as a whole represent ordinary popu¬
lar opinion, and he criticizes them as he does that from the
point of view of an ideal which he cannot be expected to admit
is impracticable. But side by side with the unconscious im-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

55

morality of conventional opinion and practice Plato saw, or
thought he saw, a danger to the moral life of Greece in the un¬
settlement of all standards by what it is the fashion to call “the
enlightenment,” that is, by philosophies of relativity, material¬
ism, hedonism, individualism, culminating in ethical nihilism.
These opinions his dramatic dialogues embody in typical speak¬
ers who are refuted and made to look foolish by Socrates. The
right of a conservative thinker to present his opinions in this
literary form can hardly be challenged. The only question that
remains, then, is: Did Plato libel the Thrasymachus of the first
book of the Republic and the Polus and the unknown Callicles
of the Gorgias? There is, as I have said, no evidence.

Plato’s ridicule of Hippias, Meno, and Ion may possibly be
motived by personal feeling. But its main purpose is the dra¬
matic presentation of a lesson in elementary logic and the illus¬
tration of what is still today the fact that men who cannot
think straight or keep to the point or define their terms may be
quite successful with the public and very proficient in their
specialties. The dramatic exhibition of the vanity and self-com¬
placency of the pupil of Gorgias, the popular rhapsode, and the
successful Sophist, and the parodies of Hippias’ style may be a
little cruel, not to say brutal. If they are unfairly exaggerated,
then Plato in these youthful skits reveals himself as personally
not quite the flawless character that no reasonable critic ever
supposed him to be.

Another ground of dissatisfaction with the moral tone of the
Platonic dialogues is the half-serious, half-jocose sympathy of
the modern reader for the victims of the Socratic cross-examina¬
tion. We have already spoken of the Platonic Socrates as the
incarnation of both the moral and the intellectual ideal — too
good to be true. But readers who do not themselves enjoy dis¬
cussion will feel that there is something overbearing in his in¬
sistence that the conversation shall always take the form of
question and answer and the kind of argument in which his own
superiority will be manifest. The feeling is natural, but the
criticism based upon it forgets that this type of conversation
was in fact widely practiced at Athens and that the Platonic di¬
alogues were deliberately composed to illustrate it. It is uncriti¬
cal, then, to judge it by the standards of the conversation of men

WHAT PLATO SAID

Warner Library
of the World’s
Best Literature,
s.v. Plato

Symp. 209 B

Supra, p. 16
Infra, p. 497

On Laws 655 E

56

and women in eighteenth-century French salons or at twen¬
tieth-century American dinner tables or at nineteenth-century
breakfasts of British literary men and bankers. As I have else¬
where said:

It was an age of discussion. The influence of the French salon on the tone
and temper of modern European literature has been often pointed out. But
the drawing room conversation of fine ladies and gentlemen has its obvious
limits. In the Athens of Socrates, for the first and last time, men talked with
men seriously, passionately, on other topics than those of business or practical
politics; and their discussions created the logic, the rhetoric, the psychology,
the metaphysic, the ethical and political philosophy of western Europe, and
wrought out the distinctions, the definitions, the categories in which all sub¬
sequent thought has been cast. The Platonic dialogues are a dramatic ideali¬
zation of that stimulating soul-communion which Diotima celebrates as the
consummation of the right love of the beautiful; wherein a man is copiously
inspired to declare to his friend what human excellence really is, and what are
the practices and the ways of life of the truly good man. And in addition to
their formal and inspirational value, they remain, even after the codification
of their leading thoughts in the systematic treatises of Aristotle, a still unex¬
hausted storehouse of ideas, which, as Emerson says, “make great havoc of our
originalities.”

Lastly, the reader’s resentment of the irritating superiority
which Plato attributes to Socrates is transferred to Plato him¬
self, and his treatment of thought as a game of which he knows
the rules. Well, we repeat, if thought, or rather argument, is a
game, Plato did know the rules better than any writer of whom
literature holds record, and could hardly be unaware that he
knew them. He knew every move, from the gambit to the
check, and anticipated every move of all future opponents. To
change the figure, his mastery of fence leaves no point un¬
guarded. He pleads the case of all philosophies more subtly,
more systematically, more plausibly, more eloquently than their
own advocates can state them. His all-embracing culture as¬
signs to every system a lesser place in the total life of the human
spirit than is claimed for it by its inventor or exploiter. He as¬
sails with unbaited foils all ideas which he regards as harmful in
their practical effects in education, morals, and politics, but he
at the same time condescendingly admits that they are psycho¬
logically inevitable from the point of view of those who hold
them. This unfailing superiority will always annoy the demo-

THE LIFE OF PLATO

57

cratic feeling of some readers. Other readers will not perceive it
because they skip all the passages in which it is manifested and
confine their interest to Plato the artist, the dramatist, the poet,
the guide and friend of those who would lead the life of the spir¬
it. And then there will always be some readers who, like Emer¬
son, not only perceive this quality in Plato but rejoice in it, be¬
cause, in his words, without Plato they would almost despair of
the possibility of an entirely reasonable book.

II

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL

Infra, p. 408
Tnfra, pp. 429-30

See Index, s.v.

Ar. Pol. II. 6
1264 b 6

We possess all writings attributed to Plato in antiquity, in¬
cluding those which some ancient critics rejected and a few
others which recent criticism adds to the list of the probably or
possibly spurious.

There is little if anything in the doubtful writings that would
materially affect the interpretation of Plato’s philosophy, except
some points in the cosmology of the Epinomis and the treatment
of Socrates’ daimonion in the Theages. The opinions of the vari¬
ous nineteenth-century German scholars who rejected such di¬
alogues as the Parmenides , Sophist , Politicus , Philebus, Laches ,
and Laws have been conscientiously recorded and examined by
Grote and Chaignet, not to speak of the great German hand¬
books of Zeller and Ueberweg-Prachter. They are not of the
slightest significance except as a part of the history of the aber¬
rations of the human mind, and no purpose would be served by
repeating them here.

More important, perhaps, is the chronology of Plato’s writ¬
ings. That, if known, would in the opinion of many scholars not
only add interest to the story of Plato’s life, but furnish the clue
to the variations and development of his philosophy. There is
now general agreement upon the broad division into three
groups: the earlier, minor, “Socratic” dialogues; the artistic
masterpieces of Plato’s maturity; the less dramatic and more
technical works of his old age. It is generally agreed that the
dramatic, minor, tentative, “Socratic” dialogues are for the most
part early; that the Laws is the latest of Plato’s works; that the
more arid, undramatic, dogmatic, elaborately metaphysical, di¬
alectical dialogues form a later group preceding or perhaps part¬
ly contemporary with the composition of the Laws; and that
such artistic masterpieces as the Symposium , the Phaedo, the
Phaedrus, and the Republic belong to the period of Plato’s full
maturity.

58

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL

59

These opinions are said to be confirmed by the method of
style statistics, the validity of which in turn is thought to be
approved by this agreement. A growing majority of the more
judicious critics doubt whether this method can yet be success- Fl6gd2-£o er IL
fully used to determine precisely the lines of demarcation be¬
tween the different groups or the succession of the dialogues
within them, and some concur in whole or part with the thesis of
my Unity of Plato’s Thought , that we do not need to know more
in order to understand Plato’s philosophy. The scholastic detail
of this question, then, may be reserved for more technical stud¬
ies.

The older method, however, that attempts to date the dialogues
by the evolution and sequence of Plato’s thoughts is perpetually
renewed, though since the publication of my Unity of Plato's
Thought with greater caution and many caveats. It rests on as¬
sumptions and methods which will not bear criticism. A single
idea or a small group of ideas is selected and traced from dia¬
logue to dialogue, and it is assumed that the relations and inter¬
dependences which seem most plausible to a modern philologian
are those which actually reflect the evolution of Plato’s thoughts
or determined the order of their public expression. It is taken
for granted that no idea is present in any Platonic dialogue
which the critic has not observed, that the absence of an idea
from any dialogue is proof that it was not present to Plato’s
mind at the time, that the elaboration in one dialogue of an idea infra. pp. 6lO-II
that is accepted as a matter of course in another supplies con¬
clusive evidence of their relative dates, that Plato could never
have criticized youth when young or age when old, that all his
utterances and all the variations in his moods and his emphasis
on different aspects of truth were determined by definite inci¬
dents in contemporary history or in his own experience which
the critic is able to divine, that there is no place in the literary
output of fifty years for accident or caprice, and that every vari¬
ation in Plato's thoughts, moods, and literary purposes is acces¬
sible in the absence of other evidence, to the conjectures of the
modern philological critic.

None of these assumptions is justifiable in theory, and all of
them are discredited by the errors to which their application in
practice gives rise. The employment of these methods invari-

6o

WHAT PLATO SAID

Loeb, Rep. I, pp.
xlv-li

Cic. Tusc. II. 3

ably leads to misinterpretations of the text. The detailed evi¬
dence for this was given in my Unity of Plato' s Thought and will
be repeated with more recent illustrations in subsequent studies.

The history of the transmission of the Platonic text and of the
criticism and classification of the dialogues in antiquity has been
repeatedly sketched in Platonic literature and is the theme of an
extremely useful, not to say definitive, book by Alline. This de¬
tail belongs either to text criticism or to the history of Plato¬
nism.

Our text of Plato is one of the best and purest that have come
down to us from antiquity. Scholars who affirm the contrary are
plainly thinking of very minor matters which are of little inter¬
est to any but professional text critics. Apart from obvious and
long since corrected errors and from wanton modern emenda¬
tions, there are few variant readings that make any appreciable
difference either for Plato's thought or for his style.

We need not now delay to speculate whether this as well as
the completeness of the Platonic corpus is due, as Grote sur¬
mises, to the preservation of Plato's writings in the library of
the Academy and their transmission in a certified copy thence
to the Alexandrian library, or to the fact that Plato, being al¬
ways interesting, has always been read.

Our first notice of the formal and systematic bibliographical
study of Plato's writings is the account of their arrangement in
trilogies by the critic and librarian of Alexandria, Aristophanes
of Byzantium (ca. 260-184 b.c.). His trilogies included only fif¬
teen dialogues, the rest being left unclassified. The order was
not chronological. The first trilogy comprised Republic , Timae -
us , and Critias (indicated by Plato himself) ; the second, Sophis-
tesy PoliticuSy and Cratylus; the third, Lawsy MinoSy Epinomis;
the fourth, TheaetetiiSy EuthyphrOy Apology ; the last Crito , Phae-
doy Epistles .

We cannot infer that Aristophanes edited the dialogues or
that his arrangement was anything more than the expression of
a fanciful analogy with the drama or a recommendation to stu¬
dents of Plato. The word used by Diogenes Laertius is the word
employed by Aristotle for the forcing of facts into a possible or
arbitrary classification. This does not lessen the plausibility of
Grote's elaborate argument that the writings were to be found

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL 61

in the Alexandrian library. The mention of letters proves only
that some letters were known as early as 260 b.c., a conclusion cf-ff^aF
which no critic who rejects all or some of the letters need be con¬
cerned to deny.

The next item of bibliographical history for our present pur¬
pose is the arrangement of thirty-six Platonic writings in nine
tetralogies by the grammarian or rhetor Thrasyllus, a contem¬
porary of Augustus and Tiberius. This also was a mere analogy
and is rejected by some later critics on the ground that the
fourth member of these Platonic tetralogies does not, like the
satyric play that concludes a dramatic tetralogy, serve for comic
relief of the preceding pieces.

To Thrasyllus is also attributed a philosophical classification
of the dialogues from the point of view of method or purpose.

This is of no significance for us except as an illustration of the
procedure of ancient critics. It is like most classifications in
post-classical literature, a conscious and pedantic imitation of
the Platonic method of division or diairesis . Dialogues are infra, P.
either of investigation (search) or exposition (guidance). Dia¬
logues of search are either gymnastic or agonistic. Gymnastic
dialogues are either obstetric or peirastic (mental tests). Ago- Prot. 3u
nistic dialogues are either endeictic (probative?) or refutative
(anatreptic, upsetting)

Similarly, dialogues of exposition are either theoretical or
practical. Theoretical dialogues are either physical or logical.
Practical dialogues are either ethical or political. The alterna¬
tive or secondary titles that specify the subject matter of each
dialogue are of unknown origin. Some modern editors, as, e.g.,
Burnet, do not print them.

The net result of these classifications is tabulated by Grote
from Diogenes Laertius as given here.

Tetralogy i*

1. Euthyphron . On Holiness .

2. Apology of Socrates . . . . Ethical .

3. Kriton . On Duty in Action

4. Phaedon . On the Soul .

Peirastic or Testing

Ethical

Ethical

Ethical

,pp. 40 ff.
i. 450

204

B 1

* Grote, Plato (ed. 1888), I, 293-94.

62

WHAT PLATO SAID

Tetralogy 2

i. Kratylus .

. . . On Rectitude in Naming

. . Logical

2. Theaetetus .

. . . On Knowledge .

3. Sophistes .

. . . On Ens or the Existent.

. . Logical

4. Politikus .

. . . On the Art of Governing
Tetralogy 3

. . Logical

1. Parmenides .

. . . On Ideas .

. . Logical

2. Philebus .

... On Pleasure .

. . Ethical

3. Symposion .

... On Good .

. . Ethical

4. Phaedrus .

... On Love .

Tetralogy 4

. . Ethical

1. Alkibiades I .

. . . On the Nature of Man . .

. . Obstetric or

2. Alkibiades II .

. . . On Prayer .

. . Obstetric

3. Hipparchus .

. . . On the Love of Gain ....

. . Ethical

4. Erastae .

. . . On Philosophy .

Tetralogy 5

. . Ethical

1. The ages .

... On Philosophy .

. . Obstetric

2. Charmides .

... On Temperance .

. . Peirastic

3. Laches .

. . . On Courage .

. . Obstetric

4. Lysis .

... On Friendship .

Tetralogy 6

. . Obstetric

1. Euthy dermis .

. . . The Disputatious Man. .

. . Refutative

2. Protagoras .

... The Sophists .

. . Probative

3. Gorgias .

... On Rhetoric .

. . Refutative

4. Menon .

. . . On Virtue .

Tetralogy 7

1. Hippias I .

... On the Beautiful .

. . Refutative

2. Hippias II .

. . . On Falsehood .

. . Refutative

3. Ion .

... On the Iliad .

. . Peirastic

4. Menexenus .

. . . The Funeral Oration. . . .

Tetralogy 8

1. Kleitophon .

, ... The Impulsive .

. . Ethical

2. Republic .

... On Justice .

. . Political

3. Timaeus .

. . . . On Nature .

. . Physical

4. Kritias .

, ... The Atlantid .

Tetralogy 9

. . Ethical

1. Minos .

. . . . On Law .

. . Political

2. Leges .

. . . . On Legislation .

. . Political

3. Epinomis .

. . . . The Night-Assembly, or 1
Philosopher

die Political

4. Epistolae XIII . . .

. . Ethical

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL 63

There would be no profit in attempting to refine upon this
classification or to substitute for it some supposedly more scien¬
tific modern arrangement. Modern criticism has spent a great
deal of effort on the endeavor to determine the precise motive or
purpose of each dialogue in relation either to the development
of Plato’s systematic thought or to the conjectured incidents
and moods of his life. Indeed, many so-called analyses of the
dialogues are devoted exclusively to this object. But it is quite
idle, as Goethe warned his critics, to try to define a work of art
by a single divined purpose or meaning. The tendency and
tone of each dialogue, including variations in the expression of
similar ideas, will be sufficiently brought out by our analysis.
And a more systematic study of Plato’s philosophy elsewhere
may point out the contribution of each to the Platonic logic
and metaphysics, ethics, politics, science, religion, and aesthet¬
ics.

Externally the dialogues may be divided into those which are
directly dramatic in form and those in which the conversation is
narrated. In one case, the Euthydemus , the narrative is in¬
closed in a purely dramatic prelude and epilogue, and even
interrupted by an episodical commentary on the narration in
dramatic form. In the narrated Phaedo there is a dramatic in¬
troduction and episode, but no epilogue. In the Protagoras the
narration of Socrates is prefaced by a page and a half of direct
dramatic conversation between Socrates and an unnamed com¬
panion. The Symposium begins as a narration by Apollodorus,
which passes into a short dramatic dialogue between Apollo¬
dorus and an unknown companion, terminating in a request that
Apollodorus narrate the account of the banquet of Agathon
which Aristodemus narrated to him.

The Republic , Charmides, Lysis, and the spurious Rivals are
monologue narratives of Socrates.

The Parmenides is Cephalus’ account of Antiphon of Clazo-
menae’s narration of Pythodorus’ narration of a conversation
at his house in Athens between the then youthful Socrates and
Parmenides and Zeno when they visited Athens at the season
of the great Panathenaea of the year 455 b.c. This somewhat
complicates the indirect forms of speech employed and has given
rise to some unnecessary corrections of the text and to some

Infra, pp. 78-79

Raeder, p. 49
Infra, p. 160
Euthyd. 290 E-
293 A

88 C-9 A, 102 A

Infra, p. 287

64

WHAT PLATO SAID

speculations as to Plato’s motives in the adoption of this form.
The most plausible hypothesis is that his object was to explain
the preservation of so abstract a discussion for so long a time.

The Theaetetus begins with a purely dramatic introduction to
the reading-aloud by a slave of a remembered dialogue that is
cf. infra, P. 269 said to have been written out in the dramatic form because of
the tiresomeness of the repeated “said he” and “said I.” From
this it has been inferred that all narrated dialogues must be
earlier than the Theaetetus . It of course could not prove that all
dialogues in the dramatic form, as, e.g., the Laches , are later.

Plato does not mention one of the obvious advantages of the
narrated dialogue, as used, for example, in the Republic , that it
enables the writer to comment on the character, the actions,
and the psychology of the speakers as modern novelists do. Pla¬
to of course could not make his speakers punctuate their con¬
versation by filling their pipes, lighting a cigarette or flicking the
ashes from a cigar, or indulging in the other diversions satirized
by Mark Twain. There were no sufficient intervals in the report
of a continuous argument for the elaborate explicitness of the
James-Joycian “stream of thought,” though Plato could have
found more than a hint of that literary device in the battle so-
?L 2I* ^110-30 2 liloquies of Hector in the Iliad. He would not, if he had known
it, have been emulous of the art that in A Strange Interlude ex¬
poses the nakedness of those less avowable sentiments that Iago
says intrude themselves upon the consciousness of the most re¬
spectable, though at the beginning of the ninth book of the
Republic he has clearly expounded whatever psychological truth
underlies this trick. But though the laws of the philosophical
dialogue and Plato’s Greek moderation forbade these manner¬
isms and exaggerations, his comment on the conversation and
bearing of his personages in such dialogues as the Republic , the
Charmides , and the Euthydemus distinctly anticipates the art of
the modern novelist in this respect.

Finally, in respect of their thought and their relation to the
Republic , the dialogues of Plato may be roughly divided into
two main groups: the so-called Socratic dialogues of search, in
which no conclusion is reached, and which end in an avowal of
ignorance, and the usually longer and more elaborate dialogues
which profess to prove some point or establish some principle.

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL 65

Every possible opinion as to the relation of these two groups
has been maintained by eminent scholars. It has been held that
they express two distinct and disconnected tendencies in Plato’s
mind, which he made no attempt to harmonize. It has been
conjectured that the negative dialogues represent Socrates, the
positive Plato himself. It has been supposed that the minor di¬
alogues were composed as part of a systematic plan to prepare
the minds of readers for the positive exposition of the Platonic
philosophy, predetermined in Plato’s mind. It has been argued
that they are a criticism of Socrates. It has been maintained
that many of them have no philosophic content and are merely
dramatic and satirical sketches, or portraits of Socrates. It has
been held that they, as well as the alleged contradictions in the
dogmatic dialogues, represent the stage to which Plato’s philos¬
ophy had attained at the time of their compositon, and that, if
we only knew their precise dates, the dialogues would be a com¬
plete and perfect guide to the gradual evolution of his thought.

There may be an element of truth in every one of these theo¬
ries. What vitiates them is the unqualified language in which
they are usually expressed, and the imperturbable resolution
with which every advocate treats the explanation that he prefers
as the sole operating cause. Grote repeatedly says that “the af¬
firmative vein in both [Socrates and Plato] runs in a channel com¬
pletely detached from the negative.” He of course must have
been aware of the psychological improbability that there should
be no causal connection and no relation in the author’s mind
between two groups of his writings, however different their ap¬
parent temper and style. And he himself sometimes indicates
such connections by citing parallels in expression or thought.
In his absolute statements, then, he is merely affirming his own
thesis against what he conceives to be the contrary extreme po¬
sition of certain German interpreters.

Again, it ought to be possible for criticism to profit by the
suggestion that the dialogues of search are on the whole more
Socratic in tone, without insisting that there is no other purpose
in any of them but to portray the “historic Socrates” or to dis¬
cuss or contravert his opinions; and there are doubtless sensible
critics who do make this necessary and obvious distinction. But
the literature of the subject is also incumbered with ingenious

Infra, pp. 465-66,
469, 476-77

66

WHAT PLATO SAID

Supra, p.

books devoted to the vigorous and rigorous demonstration of
some special thesis that admits of no qualifications or limita¬
tions. The view that all the dialogues were composed as parts of
a preconceived program of philosophical teaching is usually at¬
tributed to Schleiermacher by German Platonists and historians
of philosophy, and of late years, curiously enough, to the present
writer, who is regarded as reviving this thesis of Schleiermacher.
Schleiermacher was a very intelligent man. Whether he really
held this opinion in the absolute form attributed to him we need
not stop to inquire. As a matter of fact, he did not. But again
it is obvious that an interpretation of Plato can make use of the
possible measure of truth in this view without affirming it in a
form the gross psychological improbability of which is apparent
to any intelligent reader. It is not necessary to argue that the
entire literary output of fifty years was deliberately planned and
foreseen in Plato’s youth in order to believe that for some of the
problems presented and apparently left unsolved in the minor
dialogues the solutions given in the Republic were already pres¬
ent to Plato’s mind. Which of these “later” ideas are thus fore¬
seen and anticipated in the “earlier” writings is a question of
fact or of reasoned probability on the evidence. The rigid de¬
duction of all conclusions from an assumed thesis contributes
nothing to our understanding of Plato.

Similarly of the prevailing opinion today that the dialogues
are and must be a complete revelation of the progress and evolu¬
tion of Plato’s thought. It owes its present favor partly to the
predominance of the idea of evolution in all modern speculation,
partly to the predilection of the new biography for studying the
development of culture and thought in the individual, partly to
the greater interest for most readers of a story of change,
growth, progress, and, as it seems, intellectual adventure. But
taken absolutely, it is only a hypothesis to be tested like another.
The real question is how far the critical examination of Plato’s
writings actually supports such an assumption of a series of
changes and developments in his thought. The history of phi¬
losophy supplies abundant examples of philosophers whose main
ideas are acquired and fixed before early middle life, as well as
of thinkers whose thought is constantly evolving and changing.
To which type Plato on the whole belonged is to be determined

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL 67

by close study of the evidence, not by rhetoric about the nobility
of ever striving and growing and seeking.

My own formula, “the unity of Plato’s thought,” was adopted
thirty years ago, partly as a challenge to what I regarded as the
exaggerations of the then and now prevailing fashion. I have re¬
peatedly explained and shall more fully explain again that I do
not take it in any rigid or superstitious sense, but only as indi¬
cating the underlying presumptions and the methods of a criti¬
cal interpretation of Plato’s intentions.

The more specific question to which we now return is a point
somewhat too briefly treated in my Unity of Plato's Thought ,
the general probability that the puzzles of the minor dialogues
point forward not necessarily to a predetermined plan of the
Republic completely shaped in Plato’s mind, but in substance to
the solutions offered there. Without affirming a post hoc ergo
propter hoc , I have observed with pleasure a number of utter¬
ances to this general effect in the Platonic literature of the last
twenty-six years. Apart from von Arnim’s book, which is frank¬
ly based on The Unity of Plato' s Thought , but which is often
quoted without reference to it, as a revival of the thesis of
Schleiermacher, I may mention Friedlander and Taylor passim.
Similarly, for example, Wilamowitz, Platon:

I, 298: “Der Kratylos ist verfasst als Phaidon und Symposion bereits ge-
plant oder gar angelegt waren.”

II, 158: “Dass Platon selbst schon wusste was er bald im Phaidon vor-
tragen sollte, bezweifle ich nicht im mindesten. Dass beweist der Kratylos
389 B.”

Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought , nn. 202 and 217, with text.

1, 277, on Mcno: “Platon hatte sich den Kampf wider jene falsche Methode
fur den Euthydemus aufgespart, hatte diesen also schon in petto.”

And many similar passages.

Cf. also Raeder, pp. 75-76; Ritter, I, 229; Hoffmann, Der gegemvartige
Stand der Platonforschung; Appendix to Zeller, pp. 1059, 1060, 1063, “Was
also der Forschung moglich ist, ist gerade nicht eine Darstellung der Entwick-
lung Platons, sondern eine Darstellung seines Systems”; ibid ., pp. 1063-64,
“Diesystematisierenden Dialogesind in ihrer zeitlichen Folge nicht Urkunden
uber einen Werdegang, sondern Detailausfuhrungen — jede einzelne durch die
causa occasionalis der Dialoge vielfach eingeengt.”

Pohlenz, p. 51, on Charmides : “Die Ergebnislosigkeit beruhe darauf dass
Plato wirklich keine positive Losung habe bringen konnen, billige ich hier so
wenig wie bei den anderen Dialogen.”

P. 100: In the Protagoras Plato did not explictly prove that wrongdoing

68

WHAT PLATO SAID

Unity, p. 13

Rep. 492-93
Rep. 443 E

Laws 964 A

is always harmful because he was reserving that for the Gorgias and didn’t
want to make a colossus out of the Protagoras .

Cf. ibid,, pp. 101, 134, 207, and the review of Werner Jaeger’s Plato's Sta¬
lling, etc., in Phil . tVoch., March 16, 1929, p. 307.

These and similar passages, which it is unnecessary to multiply,
approximately express what I tried to say in one page of the
Unity of Plato's Thought:

Plato repeatedly refers in a superior way to eristic, voluntary and involun¬
tary, and more particularly to the confusion, tautology, and logomachy into
which the vulgar fall when they attempt to discuss abstract and ethical prob¬
lems. Some of these allusions touch on the very perplexities and fallacies ex¬
emplified in the minor dialogues. They do not imply that Plato himself had
ever been so confused. Why should we assume that he deceives us in order to
disguise his changes of opinion, or obliterate the traces ol his mental growth?
Have we not a right to expect dramatic illustration of so prominent a feature
in the intellectual life of the time, and do we not find it in the Laches, Char -
mides. Lysis, and the corresponding parts of the Protagoras? In brief, the
Euthydemus, 277, 278; Phaedrus, 261, 262; the Theaetetus , 167 E; the Repub¬
lic, 454, 487 BC; the Sophist , 230 B, 251 B, 259 C, and Philebus, 20 A, 15 E,
show a clear consciousness of dialectic, not merely as a method of truth, but
as a game practised for amusement or eristic, to purge the conceit of igno¬
rance, or awaken intellectual curiosity. When we find this game dramatically
illustrated why should we assume naive unconsciousness on Plato’s part?

The Republic, in which Plato explicitly states his solution of these problems,
is a marvelous achievement of mature constructive thought. But the ideas
and distinctions required for the solution itself are obvious enough, and it is
absurd to affirm that they were beyond the reach of a thinker who was capable
of composing the brilliant Protagoras, the subtle Lysis and Charmides , or the
eloquent and ingenious Gorgias. That the highest rule of conduct must be
based upon complete insight and is the possession of a few; that the action of
the multitude is determined by habit and belief shaped under the manifold
pressure of tradition and public opinion; that the virtues may be differently
defined according as we refer them to knowledge or to opinion and habit; that
opinion in the Athens of the Sophists and of the Peloponnesian war was not
guided by true philosophy, and therefore was not the “right opinion” which
should become the fixed habit of the populace in a reformed society; that the
Sophists who professed to teach virtue taught at the best conformity to the
desires and opinions of the great beast, and that therefore in the proper sense
virtue was not taught at all at Athens; that virtue is one regarded as knowl¬
edge, or as the spiritual harmony resulting from perfect self-control, but many
as expressing the opposition of contrasted temperaments and different degrees
of education; and that endless logomachies result from the inability of the
average disputant to grasp these and similar distinctions — these are reflec¬
tions that might present themselves to any intelligent young man who had
listened to Socrates, and surveyed the intellectual life of the time, though only

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL 69

the genius of Plato could construct a Republic from them. They could occur
to Plato at the age of thirty or thirty-five as well as at forty or forty-five; and
it is extremely naive to assume that so obvious a distinction as that between
science and opinion, familiar to every reader of Parmenides, and employed
to bring the Meno to a plausible dramatic conclusion, was a great scientific
discovery, marking an epoch in Plato’s thought.

What now are the probabilities? Proof in the mathematical
sense is of course impossible. Amid all their dramatic diversities
we find two or three consistent lines of thought common to the
Charmides , Laches , Lysis , Protagoras , Gorgias, Menoy the Hip -
piases, the Alcibiades , the Ion, the Euthydemus , the Euthyphro ,
and the first book of the Republic , though not of course found
entire in any one of them. These ideas may be briefly summed
up for the present purpose as follows: We understand suffi¬
ciently the meaning and function of the ordinary arts and sci¬
ences. We know what an architect, a carpenter, a shipwright,
a shoemaker, a physician, a sculptor, is. We understand how
they are taught, explicitly or by apprenticeship. We are aware
of our own ignorance, and we are willing to take the advice of
an expert in these arts. But we expect one who claims to be an
expert to point to his teacher or to a specimen of his work. We
understand also that excellence or ‘Virtue” in these arts de¬
pends on knowledge. The good man here is the man who knows.
Can we apply this analogy to the so-called moral excellences or
virtues, sobriety, bravery, justice, and the rest? To begin with,
can we define them? For to discuss anything intelligently we
must first define it. This Socratic quest for the definition thus
occupies considerable space in most of the minor dialogues. Its
significance is twofold: it is, first, an admirable and, in the age
before Aristotle, an indispensable lesson in elementary logic,
and, second, it points forward to the distinctively Platonic meta¬
physical doctrine of the transcendental or objectivized Idea.
The terminology of the definition is in fact so nearly identical
with the language used “later” of the Idea that it is quite im¬
possible to determine whether or at what point in those dia¬
logues Plato first consciously conceived the metaphysical doc¬
trine that the concept for which the definition seeks the formula
is something more than a thought in the mind. There is nothing
to disprove the supposition that he more or less consciously held
the doctrine from the beginning of his published writings.

On Apol. 25 B

On Charm. 171
DE

Laches 186 B
Gorg. 514 C

Laches 194 CD
Ale. I. 125 A
On Laches 190 B

On Euthyph. 6 D

7°

WHAT PLATO SAID

On Meno 70 A

Prot. 350 AB
Laches 196-97
Laches 197 B
Prot. 350 B 5-6

On Laches 196 E

Meno 89 E
Prot. 327 B ff.
Ar. Eth. Nic.
1180 b 30 ff.

Cf. infra, pp. 454,
481

Prot. 319 E-320 A
Meno 99 B 7

Meno 91 C
Eth. Nic. 1180 b
35

Prot. 327 E
Ale. I. hi A

Prot. 324-27; cf.
Rep. 492

Reserving that question, we return from this digression on
the definition to the main line of argument common to the So-
cratic dialogues. Are the moral virtues or excellencies like the
arts dependent on, or functions of, knowledge, and can they be
taught? Put thus absolutely and without qualification, the
question leads to contradiction and antinomies. The man who
knows how to swim, to dive, to use weapons, is in a sense braver
or more fearless than the ignorant novice. And yet, common
sense tells us that the man who faces danger without knowledge
is braver, unless we prefer to call him reckless, than the man
whose courage is his confidence that he knows how to save him¬
self. And unless qualified in ways that to common sense seem
hairsplitting, the doctrine that bravery is knowledge requires us
to deny it to the proverbially brave lion.

Again, if virtue is knowledge, it can be taught like other forms
of knowledge. But where are the teachers? The Sophists who
profess to teach virtue understand by the word some vague
general kind of knowledge superior to the ordinary arts and
variously designated as rhetoric, persuasion, political science,
the art of successfully dealing with men and affairs — good coun¬
sel, the art of life, efficiency in speech and action, the manage¬
ment of public and private business, good citizenship, “virtue”
in short {Prot. 318 E-319 A). But neither in this sophistic sense
nor in the ordinary moral sense are virtuous or successful fathers
able to teach their own sons the virtue or excellence which they
themselves possess. The claim of the Sophists to teach it with
whatever modest abatements suggested by their prudence is not
accepted by the Platonic Socrates, by such typical Athenian
citizens as Anytus, the accuser of Socrates, or later by Aristotle.
The evasion that everybody teaches virtue, as everybody
teaches the speaking of Greek, is found unsatisfactory and dis¬
missed with irony. Everybody — that is, collective society — has
many agencies for enforcing its own conventional notions of vir¬
tue or desirable conduct, which are described in a passage of the
Protagoras that anticipates much modern psychology and so¬
ciology. But there is no proof and little probability that the
conduct thus inculcated is really and absolutely virtue in any
definable and defensible sense. We are forced to take sanctuary

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL

71

in the conclusion that in society as it now is virtue comes to
those who attain it by grace divine.

But after waiving all these difficulties and puzzles, a deeper
problem remains. The minor dialogues approach the problem
of the good or, as the Republic terms it, the Idea of Good, along
two lines sufficiently distinguishable to be distinguished, though
they finally blend in one. It is assumed that the virtues and ex¬
cellencies of which Socrates seeks a definition must be ultimately
and in the highest sense “goods” and productive of happiness.
Any definition that does not meet this requirement is ipso facto
refuted, and for this reason all definitions of the virtues break
down in these dialogues. The respondent is never able to satisfy
Socrates. The things that common sense accounts goods, as
enumerated in a famous skolion, are absolutely good only if they
produce happiness or the good life, and no “so-called goods,”
not even the virtues, can do this unless they are rightly used.
But right use depends upon knowledge, not the knowledge of
the particular arts and sciences, but on some vaguely conceived
universal and fundamental knowledge which turns out to be
tautologically the knowledge of the Good. But what Good, or
what the Good is, the disputants are unable to discover.

The same result is reached more directly by starting from the
assumption that all men desire happiness, and by seeking the art
or science which will make us happy. To designate it as the
royal or political art that controls all others merely restates the
problem. What is the specific function of the royal art? What
does it do? It can make us happy only if it brings us both good
things and the right use of them. But the right use of so-called
goods depends on knowledge — knowledge of the good. The ref¬
erence of the Republic to these discussions and to their tautolo-
gous or paradoxical conclusions is explicit. When Grote and his
followers affirm that the Republic provides no solution for the
puzzles of the minor dialogues, they can only mean that it does
not offer a solution that satisfies Grote, which is irrelevant to
the question of the relation of these dialogues to the Republic.
Whether its reasoning is satisfactory to a modern philosopher
of the utilitarian or associationist school or not, the Republic
does definitely meet and try to answer nearly every problem
raised and left unanswered in the Socratic dialogues. The diffi-

On Meno 99 E

SOS A, 517 BC

On Charm. 159 D

Charm. 160-61

On Laws 607 B
Gorg. 451 E

On Charm. 158 A

On Euthyd. 280 E
Euthyd. 281 DE,
288 D ff.

Rep. 505 B

Euthyd. 278 E

On Euthyd. 291 B
Euthyd. 291 DE,
Polit. 305 E ff.

Rep. 505 B 7-9,

505 c 5-9

72

WHAT PLATO SAID

Rep. 430 C (Loeb)

Rep. 520 AB

Rep. 505 AB

Rep. 517 C

Rep. 435 D,

504 CD

Laws 662 B
On Phaedo 107 C

Tim. 29 DE

culty about defining and teaching virtue is met by the distinc¬
tion between the virtue of the ordinary citizen and the virtue of
the philosopher. Ordinary civic virtue is conformity to right
opinion about conduct, inculcated somehow by those who know.
From this point of view it is possible to produce provisional,
psychological, practically sufficient working definitions of the
several virtues. They can be taught in a society which is guided
by rulers and teachers who possess the philosophic virtue which
depends not on right opinion but knowledge. In existing soci¬
eties it is nearer the truth to say that they come by accident or
grace divine. The philosophic virtue which is the precondition
of the reformed society and education requires the knowledge
of the Good. This only will transform the provisional psycho¬
logical definitions of the virtues into scientific definitions by re¬
lating them to an ultimate standard, norm, or sanction. Plato
will not try to confine his conception of the Good in the formula
of a definition, and in his desire to exalt its importance and
awaken the reader’s interest he uses poetical, symbolic language
about it, which a hasty reader may mistake for the rhetoric of
sentimental mysticism. But his essential meaning is quite sim¬
ple. The knowledge, or, as he finally calls it, the vision of the
Good, is attainable only through an education much more pro¬
longed, more severe, more systematic, more abstract, and at the
same time more practical than any which the Athens of Plato’s
day supplied. If we still desire to know, not only the method
and “longer way” of its attainment, but the positive content
and full meaning of the Idea of Good, Plato has described it far
more adequately than any definition could do by the social and
educational order of his Republic and Laws , by the philosophy
and psychology of ethics which prove the comparative worth¬
lessness, except so far as they are necessary, of the satisfactions
of our ordinary appetites, and finally by the moral and religious
intensity of his affirmation that the good life after all is essen¬
tially what the plain man would call the virtuous life. Knowl¬
edge of these things is knowledge of the Idea of Good for most
practical purposes, though the metaphysician and the cosmog-
onist may enlarge their imaginations and extend their thoughts
to the principle of goodness in all things and to the order of
the heavens that declare the goodness of their Creator.

PLATO’S WRITINGS IN GENERAL

73

I have somewhat simplified and modernized the expression of
these ideas in the Re-public , but I have introduced no thought
that is not distinctly implied there. Is there any likelihood that
the systematic and reiterated statement of the problem in the
minor dialogues could have been thus nicely preadapted to the
solution of the Republic unless the answer was in substance al¬
ready present to Plato’s mind when they were composed? By
what process of fumbling and feeling the way from step to step
is it psychologically conceivable that they all came to point con¬
sistently to the same conclusion? Interpreters who insist that
Plato’s development in his extant writings was a hand-to-mouth
evolution from dialogue to dialogue are logically bound to an¬
swer these questions as specifically as they have here been
stated. These and other technical problems of the interpreta¬
tion of Plato will be discussed elsewhere. Here we attempt to
give a full and fair account of what Plato actually said. The ct. Pret.
analyses of the dialogues are intelligible singly and may be read
in any order. They are here arranged in what seemed the most
convenient sequence.

EUTHYPHRO

2 a Euthyphro meets Socrates in the porch of the King Archon.

Each has a suit, as Euthyphro puts it, or rather in Socrates’ case
2B an indictment. Socrates is to answer the charge of one Meletus,
an unknown, lanky-haired, hook-nosed youth of the deme Pit-
thos, who accuses him of introducing strange divinities and
2 cd corrupting the youth. The boy is running to tell his mother, the
state, about Socrates. Pie is the only statesman who begins at

3 a the right end. Like a good gardener, he first clears out the weeds

that obstruct the young shoots. Euthyphro understands. The
accusation must be based on Socrates’ claim that he possesses a
3 b divine voice, an internal monitor. The multitude is very ready
to listen to calumny in matters of religion. Why, the people
3 c laugh at me as a madman when I prophesy in the Assembly and
forewarn them of things to come, though every word I have
ever spoken is true. We must not be dismayed, but face them
in true Homeric fashion. Socrates thinks it no great matter
to be laughed at. The Athenians don’t mind unconventional
opinions if the holder of them does not teach others. Euthyphro
is perhaps somewhat scan ter of his maiden presence than Socra-
3 d tes, who pours out his thoughts without reserve to all who wish
to hear. If the indictment is only mockery, they may spend a

3 e pleasant hour in the courtroom. But if they mean it seriously,

only you prophets can foretell the result. Euthyphro is the
prosecutor, the pursuer, in Greek idiom, in a case that will cause

4 a many to judge him a madman. He is pursuing, not the prover¬

bial bird, but his own father, for the “murder” of a guilty slave
4 c whom he had neglected and allowed to die in prison on their
clerouchic estate on the island of Naxos. Euthyphro must be an
advanced thinker indeed, opines Socrates, if he knows that it is
4 bc right to prosecute his own father on such a charge. Euthyphro’s
reply that the fact that the man is your father is irrelevant if he
is guilty is sometimes said to be in harmony with the ironical
48o cd paradox of the Gorgias that the only use of rhetoric is to accuse
yourself and your friends and so purge their souls when they

74

EUTHYPHRO

75

sin. But Plato’s object here is to show Socrates’ real feelings
on the plane of common sense and practical reality. Socrates is
no Samuel Butler, and his natural sentiment of filial duty is that
of the Greek people and of Plato himself, as is apparent from the
Crito, the Laws, and the seventh epistle if genuine.v

The transition to the discussion is effected by Socrates’ ironi¬
cal proposal to become a disciple of Euthyphro. He will then 5 a
challenge Meletus in the courtroom either to acknowledge Eu-
thyphro’s wisdom or to indict him for corrupting the old men. 5 b
Let him try it, snaps Euthyphro. There would be much more
talk of him than of me in the courtroom. That’s just it, replies 5bc
Socrates. Meletus pretends not to see you and indicts me. You
must know all about what is holy and unholy. Teach me, then,
what is piety. Piety, is the reply, is doing what I do, punishing
your father as Zeus punished his. There follows a distinct an- 5 de
ticipation of the censorship of Homeric theology elaborated in
the Republic. With one of Plato’s characteristic sudden modula¬
tions of style from satire or controversial dialectic to friendly
earnestness, Socrates asks, in the beautiful version of Ruskin,
“And think you that there is verily war among the gods? And 6b
dreadful enmities and battles such as the poets have told and
such as our painters set forth in graven scripture to adorn all our
sacred rites and holy places, yes, and in the great Panathenaea
themselves the peplus, the robe of Athena, full of such wild pic- 6 c
turing is carried up to the Acropolis — shall we say that these
things are true, O Euthyphron, right-minded friend?” Euthy¬
phro does believe it and is prepared to tell Socrates other things
about matters divine that will surprise him. I don’t doubt it,
Socrates replies drily. But he as usual postpones “to another
time” the exhibition of his interlocutor’s varied talents, but
presses the demand for a definition. He again reminds Euthy- 6D
phro that he does not want one of the many instances of piety, 6E
but the one idea, form, or aspect that pervades them all, the
thing that makes them piety, the model to which we can look,
the pattern which we can use in determining our application of
the word.

The language of the definition here is undistinguishable from
the language of the metaphysical theory of ideas in “later” di¬
alogues. Euthyphro, quicker of apprehension than Hippias, is

76

WHAT PLATO SAID

willing to give his definition in the required form, the pious or
holy is what is pleasing to the gods. This, if pressed, would
raise, as Socrates does later, the whole problem of the relation of
religion or theology to ethics. But Greek polytheism provides
Socrates provisionally with another way of attack. The gods of
7D the mythology quarrel with one another, and if they quarrel,
their differences, like those of men, must turn on the justice and
injustice of certain actions, for a difference of opinion about the

7 c size or number of things would be settled by a resort to measure-
s b ment. Euthyphro tries to evade this difficulty by the assertion

that all gods agree that the wrongdoer ought to be punished.
8 c But so do all men, Socrates maintains against some demur on

8 d the part of Euthyphro. What they dispute is who is the wrong¬

doer. And like a modern lawyer putting a hypothetical ques-
oA tion to a witness, he asks how Euthyphro knows that all the
gods think it right for a son to indict a father under all the con¬
ditions specified in Euthyphro’s case. Euthyphro objects that
ob it would take too long to explain this point, and Socrates, glanc¬
ing at a thought that Plato repeats elsewhere, asks if there will
be time to explain it to a jury.

9d The definition is a hypothesis of Euthyphro which he is at
ii c 5 liberty to modify. But even if we amend it to read that piety is
what all the gods approve, the problem of the relation of religion
io a to ethics remains. Do the gods love holiness or piety because it
io d is holy, or is it holy because they love it? Euthyphro incau¬
tiously admits that God loves the holy because it is holy. This
is an abandonment of the definition that the holy is what God
loves. And the fallacy, if there is one, lies in dramatically repre¬
senting Euthyphro as making the inconsistent admission. He
ought to have said, No, God does not love it because it is holy,
but his loving it makes it holy. The subtle verbal argument
that drives Euthyphro to this admission merely brings out the
io a-c inconsistency in his thought. In general a thing is the adjective
or participle derived from the verb because of the action of the
verb. It is a loved-by-the-gods thing because it is loved by the
gods. The compound adjective “dear-to-god” may be substi¬
tuted for the participle “god-beloved,” and so we get: It is
dear-to-god because it is loved. But Euthyphro has admitted
that with holy it is the other way around; it is loved because it is

EUTHYPHRO

77

holy. Holy and dear-to-god, then, cannot be the same. And
dear-to-god is not the definition of holy but only the description
of a quality not included in the definition. It is not the essence,
but in Plato’s language a pathos , an affection, in Aristotle’s, a
symbebekos or accident. If there is a fallacy it consists merely in
reaching this conclusion through a distinction of language so
subtle and shifting that ordinary usage disregards it. Aristotle
(Met. 1017 a 28) says in another connection that there is no dif¬
ference between vyialvuv eari and vyiaivei. Plato finds there
the difference between accident and essence, or, we might also
say, between action and the state or condition resulting from
the action. Our feeling of fallacy is due to the attempt to formu¬
late a real distinction by the aid of mere grammatical accidents
of the Greek language which English cannot reproduce. But the
essential meaning is the question of the autonomy of ethics, de¬
bated by the mediaeval Schoolmen and still unsettled.

Socrates does not explicitly take up that question, but he con¬
cludes that to be loved by all the gods cannot be the essence or
definition of holiness, for it is only a fact about it, something
that happens to it, an affection or quality of it, not its sub¬
stance. Euthyphro, like Meno and Hippias, complains that Soc¬
rates’ hairsplitting quibbles unsettle every argument.

A little banter here relieves the monotony of dialectics. Soc¬
rates the sculptor resembles his ancestor Daedalus who carved
statues that moved and would not “stay put” as the Meno ex¬
presses it. The Meno also employs a different figure for a simi¬
lar complaint, and the Euthyphro perhaps “anticipates” the
Meno by the suggestion in the word “runs away” of the thought
that it is only when bound by causal reasoning that opinions are
converted into knowledge. However that may be, as the hypoth¬
eses are Euthyphro’s, Socrates as usual affirms that it is the
interlocutor who is responsible for the conclusions and the in¬
stability of their opinions. No, retorts Euthyphro, it is Socrates
who makes the argument go round and round. Something too
much of this, concludes Socrates, and returns to the point.

Since Euthyphro is a spoiled child and will not disclose his
wisdom, Socrates himself will take the lead and make a sugges¬
tion. He begins with a lesson in elementary logic. All that is
holy is just, but all that is just need not be holy. Euthyphro

11 B

On Meno 80 A
11 CD

80 C

11 C 5

11 E

On Laches 179 D

12 A

WHAT PLATO SAID

78

12 AB

12 D

12 E

13 CD

13 E

14 B

14 E

14 E 8
Gorg. 521 B 2

5i4 A 4

15 A

On Charm 174 B
11

15 BC

16 E

does not understand this distinction between the genus and the
species, or, to put it still more technically, this inconvertibility
of the universal affirmative, and Socrates illustrates it by the
misapprehension of the poet — to us unknown — who says where
there is fear there is awe (shame, at Scos). The truth is rather
that where there is awe there is fear, for fear is the more com¬
prehensive notion. So the holy is a part of justice. What part?
is the next question. Euthyphro opines that it is the part of jus¬
tice concerned with the service of the gods. We understand the
service of men and of animals that makes them better, but how
can man serve god and better him? objects Socrates. As slaves
serve masters, by assisting them. Yes, in some definite task.
In what work can we co-operate with the gods and assist them?
In many and fine works, says Euthyphro vaguely. But Socrates
demands a more specific answer, which Euthyphro again says
would take too long. This only he will affirm: to act and speak
as is pleasing to the gods in sacrifice and prayer is salvation and
the contrary is ruin.

Socrates interprets sacrifice to mean gifts and prayer to mean
petitions, and ironically reduces Euthyphro’s conception to the
do ut des of popular religion in every age. It is a kind of barter
and trade between gods and men. Euthyphro accepts the mean¬
ing, though like Callicles in the Gorgias he is displeased with
Socrates’ phrasing of it. It is a one-sided trade, continues Soc¬
rates, for what can man give god? Praise and honor, replies
Euthyphro, again thinking in terms of universal popular reli¬
gion. But praise and honor cannot benefit the gods. It only
pleases them. We have returned to our starting-point: piety is
what pleases the gods, and Euthyphro is more cunning than
Daedalus, for his creations not only move but move in a circle.
We must start afresh and try to grasp this elusive Proteus. But
Euthyphro is in a hurry and cannot delay for further discussion,
and Socrates is left lamenting that he must face Meletus with¬
out the knowledge that Euthyphro surely possesses but with¬
holds from him.

The wealth of ideas compressed into these few pages illus¬
trates the unity of Plato’s thought and also the impossibility of
deducing the whole significance of a Platonic dialogue from a
single supposed purpose. The purposes of the Euthyphro are its

EUTHYPHRO

79

entire content: the favorable contrast of Socrates with Euthy¬
phro, the satire on popular religion, the lesson in elementary
logic, the hint, perhaps, of the theory of ideas, the deeper prob¬
lem of the relations of religion and morality, the difficulty, per¬
haps the impossibility, for finite minds of defining without con¬
tradictions our relations and service to the infinite that we ap¬
prehend as God. The introduction of God into any such discus¬
sion may, I fancy, be compared to the introduction of infinity
into a mathematical equation.

There are, as we have seen, suggestions of many thoughts
more fully elaborated in “later” dialogues. It may be plausibly
argued that we are not justified in reading into Plato's youthful
writings what we have learned from the works of his maturity.
But this is one of the many generalizations that must be con¬
trolled by specific facts. Contemporary philology is, in fact,
more often led astray by the assumption that we cannot attrib¬
ute to Plato the possession of any idea until we come to his full¬
est and most explicit expression of it — or to the expression that
the philologian happens to remember.

The fancy that the Euthyphro eliminates piety from the list
of cardinal virtues and must therefore be earlier than all dia¬
logues that neglect to mention it among them attributes to
Plato a rigidity of ethical schematism which is foreign to his
thought. The four cardinal virtues can easily be picked out
from the sayings of the Greek poets, though with the exception
of a doubtful passage of Pindar there is no one place where the
virtues are explicitly and definitely limited to four. Plato's Re¬
public , through Cicero, St. Augustine, and other writers, is the
main source of the tradition in subsequent literature. But it is
obvious that this classification is adopted in the Republic mainly
to provide a virtue for each one of the three social classes and
one for all taken together. And even in the Republic there are
incidental lists of the virtues not limited to these four. The ad¬
mission that even after the Republic Plato continues to use “pi¬
ous” in conjunction with the names of other virtues is a virtual
abandonment of the theory. It is argued that in so doing he was
not speaking scientifically but conforming to popular usage. It
would perhaps be more exact to say that he is merely expressing
himself naturally. Throughout earlier Greek literature, from

On Laws 631 CD
Rep. 427 E (Loeb)

8o

WHAT PLATO SAID

Homer down, the adjective “pious” is much more frequently
used to reinforce the attribution of another virtue than the noun
is used to designate a specific virtue. That is natural, as it is in
English to speak of an upright and God-fearing man. In fact,
piety would be isolated as a specific virtue only by the profes¬
sional theologian or the fanatic. What we now speak of as the
liberal religious thinker will in every age treat piety as a mood
in relation to or an emotional synonym of all virtue. Plato was
evidently what we should now call a liberal theologian and
probably held this view as soon as he had any definite opinions
about religion. In the Euthyphro piety is for the purposes of the
argument treated as a subdivision of justice. It is right dealing
toward God as justice is right dealing toward our fellow-men.
That too is a natural enough conception, and the fact that it is
explicitly stated for the first and only time in the Euthyphro
does not justify the conjecture that before the Euthyphro Plato
regarded piety as a distinct virtue and afterward did not.

APOLOGY

The discussion of the “historicity" of Socrates' speech to his
judges naively assumes that the Dichtung und Wahrheit of Pla¬
to's art was controlled by the critical conscience of a modern
historian. Socrates may or may not have said some of the things
attributed to him by Plato who was present. Plato could easily
imitate, so far as he pleased, the forms and phrases of Athenian
courtroom oratory. But there is no likelihood that just such a
speech as the Apology was ever delivered to an Athenian jury.
It is too obviously Plato's idealization of his master's life and
mission and his summing-up of the things that needed to be said
to the Athenian public about his condemnation by a democratic
tribunal. There was a considerable now lost literature on the
case of Socrates. But the supreme masterpiece in that kind has
come down to us.

The calculated simplicity of the introduction; the plausible
distinction between his formal accusers before the jury and the
comedians, the accusers who have for years calumniated Socra¬
tes before public opinion as a star-gazing babbler and Sophist
who makes the “worse appear the better reason"; the disclaim¬
ing of all pretension to “educate men" and the satire of the
Sophist Evenus who professes to teach virtue expeditiously for
five minae; the account of Socrates' mission; his attempted veri¬
fication of the oracle that pronounced him wisest of men; his
discovery that his wisdom was only the absence of the false con¬
ceit of knowledge that his questions laid bare in the Sophists,
the politicians, the poets, the artisans of Athens; the enmities
that he incurred from these exposures, and the imitations of
them by his youthful followers; the development of the right
of questioning the opponent in a suit into a minor Platonic dia¬
logue that convicts Meletus of never having given a serious
thought to the moral issues raised by his indictment; the ironi¬
cally fallacious argument that it would have been to his own dis¬
advantage to corrupt the youth of the city in which he was to
live; the protest that Meletus' accusation of atheism confounds

81

34 A i

38 B 6

17 ABC

18 AB

24 B
10 BC
18 DE
28 A 7 ff-

18 B

19 BC

19 DE

20 AB

21 A ff.

21 Cff.

22 A
22 D

22 Eff.

23 C

33 C

24 D ff.
26 B

25 C

Isoc. Antid. 218
Prot. 327 B 2

82

WHAT PLATO SAID

26 d him with Anaxagoras, who said the sun is stone and the moon

earth; the half-serious plea that he who professes to hear the ad¬
monition of a divine voice must believe in things divine and can-

27 e not therefore be an atheist as Meletus interprets the indictment;

29 d the defiant proclamation that while he lives he will not abandon

28 e the post assigned to him by God, even as he did not desert his

29 de ff. place at the battles of Amphipolis, Potidaea, and Delium, but

will continue to admonish his fellow-citizens to take thought

30 cde for their souls’ welfare and will still be, if the homely image may

30 e be pardoned, the gadfly, appointed by God to sting into action

that noble sluggish steed, Athens; the explanation why he con-

31 c a. fines these admonitions to individuals and abstains from poli-
% b tics, which is perhaps Plato’s own apology for himself, and

which we may note anticipates Matthew Arnold’s essay on “The
32 a Function of Criticism at the Present Time”; the citation, with
apologies for the boast, but to prove his fearlessness, of his re-
328 fusal to put to vote the illegal motion to condemn the generals

32 c of Arginusae, and of his defiance of the Thirty who bade him

33 E “bring in” Leon of Salamis; his invocation of the testimony of
240-41 • friends and disciples and the parents of his pupils; his disdainful

34 c rejection of the customary appeals to the pity of the jurors,
34 d though he too is human and not born of an oak or a rock; and,
36 b after the verdict has gone against him, his challenging of the
36 d jury by proposing as the fit penalty entertainment in the Pry-

37 b-d taneum for life; his refusal to consider prison or exile or silence,

38 a 8 because, like Aristotle’s great-souled man, he is not accustomed

to think himself deserving of any evil, and life without liberty
to test ourselves and others is not worth living; and his final con¬
temptuous consent to pay a fine of one mina himself, changed
38 b to a fine of thirty minae for which Plato and other friends will
be surety; and yet again after his condemnation his warning to

39 cd the jurors who voted against him that they cannot silence the

voices of criticism by putting men to death; and, finally, ad¬
dressed to the jurors who voted for acquittal, the only true
39E-40A judges, as he hints by addressing them only by that title, the
40-41 consideration that death is no evil since if it is an eternal sleep
it will be even as one untroubled night, and few of our days are
as happy as that, and if it is a departure to a better wrorld what
happiness to hold converse there with the great spirits who have

APOLOGY

83

gone before, who will not put men to death for questioning their
opinions — and the last wistful words, “There is no more to say,
for we must now go our ways, I to die and you to live. Which of
us goes to the better lot is known to none but God” — all this and
much more is combined by Plato’s art to effect the overwhelm¬
ing impression which the Apology still produces on the minds of
sensitive undergraduates, and to make it what it remains to this
day, the gospel of all rebellious souls who rightly or wrongly see
themselves in the place of Socrates contra mundum , and over¬
look the no less impressive conservative Platonic moral of the
Crito expressed in Socrates’ refusal to wrong his country by dis¬
obedience to the law because the law has wronged him.

Cf. Gorg. 47 z B

CRITO

43 A
Pliaedo 58 E,
88 E

Phaedo 58 A ff.

Pliaedo 58 B 8

44 AB

45 A
Phaedo 99 A

Apol. 37 CD

45 E

46 B

Phaedo 84 D,

8 II., 91 B

46 D

Phaedo 91

47 AB
On Laches 184
DE

The Critoy though short, is a masterpiece of art. Socrates
wakes at dawn to find Crito sitting by his side marveling at his
peaceful sleep. Crito thinks that the state vessel, on the return
of which from Delos the execution may take place, has been de¬
layed at Sunium and will arrive today. Socrates believes that it
will be later, for a beautiful white-robed woman appeared to
him in his dream and repeated the words of Achilles in Homer,
“On the third day thou shalt go home to fertile Phthia.” This,
the most beautiful symbolic quotation in European literature, is
of course not to be misused as evidence of Plato’s superstition,
nor need we ask whether the historical Socrates really had the
dream.

Crito came to make a last, somewhat breathless protest
against the folly and weakness of submission. Socrates need not
fear for Crito. These sycophants are cheap and Crito, with the
aid of Simmias and Cebes, can easily buy them off and contrive
Socrates’ escape to guest-friends in Thessaly who will entertain
and care for him. He need not fear, what he said in the court¬
room, that he wouldn’t know what to do with himself there. It
will be an eternal disgrace to Crito and Socrates’ other friends to
have it said that they lacked either the influence or the will to
rescue their master.

Socrates’ reply to this is to remind Crito that he is incapable
of obeying anything else than the rule of reason as it appears to
him. He cannot dismiss the conclusions of former discussions
because of his present situation. He is not to be frightened like
a child by the hobgoblin of the power of the mob to slay and
confiscate. Were their former agreements, that some opinions
deserve consideration and others do not, idle talk and the child¬
ish nonsense that many deem them? He is willing to review the
question with Crito, who in all human probability is not about
to die and is therefore unprejudiced. We used to say that only
the opinion of the one expert and not that of the ignorant many
deserves regard. That is true of material things. Is it not also

84

CRITO

85

true of the just and the unjust, the honorable and the base?
And if life is worthless with a diseased body, is it endurable
when that part of us, whatever it is, with which justice and in¬
justice are concerned has been corrupted? If it is said that the
many can kill us, do we not still believe that the true end of life
is not to live but to live well? These are the principles that must
govern our present discussion. We agreed that the good man
would never requite wrong with wrong as the many think that
he should. Let Crito declare whether he sincerely accepts this
principle. There can be no common ground of debate between
those who acknowledge and those who reject its authority, but
they must needs despise one another’s counsels. If one may not
wrong others still less may one wrong his father or his father-
land, and it is wronging your country to disobey her laws and
make them invalid, as far as in you lies. The laws of Athens, if
they could find a voice, might well address Socrates and remind
him of his lifelong acquiescence in the virtual social contract by
which he implicitly promised them obedience in return for all
that they have done for him, and confirmed the promise by his
failure to avail himself of their permission to go elsewhere if they
were displeasing to him. He has never left Athens to travel,
even to Sparta, which he praises. Will he now run away and ex¬
pose himself to taunts and ridicule and entertain the disorderly
Thessalians with ludicrous descriptions of his disguise and es¬
cape ?

Their speech concludes with an eloquent warning that, if he
disregards and dishonors the laws of his own country, he will be
the enemy of law everywhere, whether in the well-governed
states of Thebes and Megara or in the world to come. These
admonitions ring in Socrates’ ears as the sacred flutes in the ears
of the Corybants, and make it impossible for him to heed Crito’s
appeal. He can do no other, but must tread the path appointed
for him by God.

47 CD
Rep. 445 AB
Gorg. 512 A

48 A
44 D

Gorg. 51 1 AB

49 A
49 B
49 D

50 E ff.

51 D, 52 E
Meno 80 B 5
Phaedr. 250 D

HIPPIAS MINOR

Prot. 314 C
3i5 BC

Prot. 337 C-8 A
337 D

282 DE
Meno 91 D
Hipp. Maj. 282 A
On Symp. 185 C

Hipp. Maj. 285 E

On Apol. 25 B

367-68

The Sophist, Hippias of Elis, is satirized in the Platonic di¬
alogues for qualities for which modern .rehabilitators of the
Sophists praise him. He is the representative of the gospel of
the self-sufficiency, that is, the sufficiency unto himself, of the
sage, but not in the Socratic and the later Cynic and Stoic sense
of the limitation of his desires to a few easily procured necessi¬
ties. Hippias' self-sufficiency is his versatility, his universality,
his ability, in contempt of the division of labor, to provide for
all his own wants. This, which in Plato's estimate would make
him a jack-of-all-trades, constitutes him in the eyes of his mod¬
ern admirers the original advocate of multi vocational, vocation¬
al, or practical education for life.

He is prominent among the assembled Sophists in the Protag¬
oras . He lectures on astronomy and music and makes a speech
amplified by accumulation of synonyms and harping on the op¬
position of nature and convention. By nature, he says, all wise
men are compatriots, but law and convention constrain us to
much that is contrary to nature. This brings him credit with
the moderns as the first progressive and cosmopolitan thinker.
In the Hippias Major he boasts that he has made more money
than any other two Sophists and held his own even with Protag¬
oras on the Sicilian Chautauqua circuit. He there expresses him¬
self in the jingle and antithesis of the Gorgian figures, and
though he cannot remember the issue in an argument, he claims
to have invented an art of memory that enables him to recall
fifty proper names after one hearing. We know practically noth¬
ing about him except what Plato tells us, and modern apologies
for him express only the revolt of sympathy in some minds for
the victims of the Socratic dialectic and of Plato's satire.

The Hippias Minor issues in the paradox that if virtue is
knowledge, and the virtues may be compared in Socratic fashion
with the arts and sciences, then it is better to do wrong know¬
ingly than without knowing it, for induction shows that in every
science and craft the good artist is the one who can most skil-

86

HIPPIAS MINOR

87

fully and most certainly go wrong if he chooses. Socrates does
not always believe the paradox, but now he has an access, a 372 de
paroxysm of belief, and can see no escape from the conclusion 376 bc
if the premises are admitted. We are thus warned not to take
the argument too seriously. And a majority of recent interpret¬
ers recognize that Plato was aware of the fallacy and was not
misled by it. It has even been fancied that it is a part of a sys¬
tematic attack by Plato on the Socratic analogy between the
arts and virtues and the identification of virtue with knowledge. on Laws 860 d
Quite fanciful also is the argument that it must have been writ¬
ten in Socrates’ lifetime, because Plato would never have at¬
tributed so discreditable a conclusion to Socrates after his mem¬
ory had been transfigured by a martyr’s death. Such conjec¬
tures belong to the domain of happy thought philology. They
are just notions that occur to some reader of the dialogue. There
is no proof of them, and they are no more probable than any
other fancy that may suggest itself.

The dialogue is in the direct dramatic form, and there is prac¬
tically no scenic setting. Hippias has just concluded a brilliant
lecture, and Eudicus, speaking for a small group who remain
after the lecture, challenges Socrates either to join in the ap- 363 a-d
plause or to ask questions about anything from which he dis- Gorg. 447 d
sents. Socrates, as usual, has just one little difficulty. But this
time it is not a demand for a definition, but ostensibly a ques¬
tion about poetry, the type of topic he deprecates as futile in
the Protagoras for a reason which he later repeats here: the poet 36s d
is not present and cannot be cross-examined as to his meaning.

Hippias had said much about Homer. Is he willing to answer a 364 b
few questions about some points of the lecture that Socrates did
not quite understand, and particularly about the characters of 364 de
Achilles and Odysseus? Hippias, who, like Gorgias, opens a 363 a
question-box after every lecture and has never met his match, G6o4r?448A
is of course ready to answer anything that Socrates may ask.

His plain meaning was that Homer pictures Achilles as the best 364 c
man who went to Troy, Nestor as the wisest, Odysseus as the
most ttoKvt poiros y the most shifty and versatile. Socrates under¬
stands everything except the epithet ttoXvtpottos. Is not Achilles 364 e
shifty too? No, replies Hippias, Achilles is most simple and
true. In his answer to the embassy in the ninth book of the

88

WHAT PLATO SAID

ix. 312 Iliad he himself says that he hates as the gates of hell the man
365 a who speaks one thing and hides another in his heart. Homer

365 b 8 then, Socrates infers, meant by ttoXvtpottos false, and he thought
Herod. 11. 121 that the false speaker and the true speaker are two different

men. Or, since Homer is absent, will Hippias defend these prop-
365 d ositions in behalf of Homer and himself? He will. And Socrates,
first getting him to admit that speaking falsely is an ability, not

366 cff. an inability, a faculty, a power to do something, proves to him

by induction from the arts and sciences that the man who has
Cf’°E (Loebf3 the power to do right is also the man who has the power to do
wrong. The induction is of the same type as that used in the
159 cfi. Charmides to refute the definition of sophrosyne as quietness.
But there is no quest for a definition here. The dulness of this
long induction is then relieved by a digression.

368 bcd Hippias, if anybody, ought to know what is true of all the
Cic. de on hi. arts^ for ]le }s mast;er of all. Socrates heard him boasting in the

agora that at his last visit to Olympia he wore only garments of
his own making, had himself made his seal ring, his strigil, and
his oil-flask, had woven himself his Persian belt, cobbled his
sandals, and took with him to the festival epics, tragedies, and
dithyrambs, as well as prose compositions of his own fashioning,
and was prepared to lecture on metres and music and letters and

368 e teach the art of memory. Can he name any one of all these arts

,in which the true man and the (potentially) false man differ?
He cannot. And therefore his statement about Achilles and

369 b Odysseus cannot be right. Hippias replies by complaining as
On Meno 80 A others do in other dialogues, and as he does in the Greater Hip -

369 c 6 pias (301 B and 304 A), of Socrates' petty quibbling style of
Rep. 348 a 8 reasoning. He separates off some trifling difficulty and refuses

to take a broad view of the whole question. It is the eternal op¬
position of the rhetorician with his long speeches and the dialec¬
tician who insists on responsive answers to brief questions,
which is never long absent from Plato's mind when Socrates is
conversing with a Sophist. Many passages in other dialogues
301 b and the more open parody of Hippias' complaint in the Hippias
304 ab Major are a sufficient indication of Plato's real opinion. Yet an
eminent scholar fancies that Plato at this date thought Hippias'
objections justified, and Mr. Havelock Ellis observes with a
naivete that Plato's critics think exaggerated in Hippias' mouth,

K

HIPPIAS MINOR

89

“Plippias was in the line of those whose supreme ideal is totality
of existence,” whereas the Platonic Socrates, to borrow the no
less apt words of another modern thinker, is unable to glimpse
the significance of the totality of vision which Professor White-
head has set out with such magistral nobility.

Socrates soothes Hippias by conceding his superior wisdom,
which is the very reason why Socrates hangs upon his lips and
tries to get his exact meaning. But to return to Homer. As a
matter of fact, Achilles is more shifty than Odysseus. In that
very speech of the ninth Iliad he contradicts himself and speaks
falsely to Ajax and Odysseus and “gets away with it.” Hippias
revolts at the conclusion to which he is again led, that inten¬
tional wrongdoing is better than unintentional, and Socrates
again tries to soothe him with compliments and ironically ad¬
mits his own stupidity, since, whenever he meets any of those
whom the Greeks deem most wise, he finds himself in utter dis¬
agreement with them. In the present problem he cannot fix his
opinions, but now believes this paradox and now doubts it, and
Hippias can heal him only if he will consent to eschew long
speeches and proceed by brief question and answer. He must,
after his professions, Eudicus opines. Hippias complains again
of Socrates’ unfairness in debate, but consents to renew the dis¬
cussion, and another induction proves to him that in all arts and
accomplishments the voluntary wrongdoer is superior to the in¬
voluntary. Hippias’ only answer is another protest at the mon¬
strosity of the conclusion, and Socrates repeats his statement
that he himself is in doubt, but the conclusion seems to follow
inevitably from the admissions. A few lines from the end of the
dialogue, however, Plato warns the observant reader by a reser¬
vation. The one who errs voluntarily is the good man, if there
is anyone who errs voluntarily. But it is a fundamental Socratic
doctrine, which Plato himself holds in some sense to the end,
that no man does err voluntarily.

The dialogue is authenticated by an explicit reference in Aris¬
totle. The extent of its influence upon Aristotle has escaped the
attention of most commentators. It is plainly the source of the
distinction between a Swa/jus and a s, a faculty and a habit,
on which Aristotle bases his definition of virtue, and with the
aid of which he disposes of many fallacies, including the Socratic

369 D

Hipp. Maj. 286 D
Euthyph. 5 A

370-71

372 A

372 B

372 D-E

373 A
373 B
369 B

373 E-375 D

375 D

375 D ff.

376 BC
376 B s

On Laws 860 D

Met. 1025 a 6
Eth. Nic. 1140
b 23

WHAT PLATO SAID

90

Apoi. 25 b analogy between the virtues and the arts. A bbvaius or faculty,
he repeatedly says, is equally capable of opposites. A or
habit is not. Plato himself was sufficiently aware of this distinc¬
tion, though he does not formulate it so distinctly. Socrates, as
365 d we have seen, begins his argument by getting Hippias to admit
that the false have the power to do something, and near the end
37s e he resumes the argument with the alternative that justice is
either a bvvaius or an ei ruTTrj/jLrj, and on either supposition the
voluntary action is better than the involuntary. The fallacy is
too nakedly and explicitly exposed to be unconscious.

HIPPIAS MAJOR

The genuineness of the Greater Hippias is still debated. If
not by Plato, it is sufficiently Platonic to illustrate both the sa¬
tirical humor and the logical methods of the minor dialogues.
1 1 is in dramatic form and begins abruptly. Socrates meets the
fair Hippias, an infrequent visitor at Athens, because, as he
says, he is overwhelmed with the affairs which his fatherland
Elis can trust to no other man but him. As Mr. Havelock Ellis
innocently puts it, the fellow-citizens of Hippias thought him
worthy to be their ambassador “to the Peloponnesus.” The iron¬
ical Socrates is puzzled by the fact that the sages of old — the
Pittacuses, the Biases, the Thaleses, and the Anaxagorases —
abstained from politics, and Hippias, who thinks that they were
not (like himself) equal to both public and private business,
complacently accepts the suggestion that sophistry, like the
other arts and crafts, has made great progress in these modern
days. It is his habit, however, to praise the men of the olden
time, since he “comprehends the envy of those who live today
and apprehends the enmity of those who have passed away.”
Your phrases are as fine as your thoughts, rejoins Socrates, and
we must indeed admit the progress of sophistry when we reflect
on the great sums that Gorgias, Prodicus, and Protagoras have
made by displaying their wisdom to the mob. Ah, but if you
only knew how much money I have made, you would wonder
still more, says Hippias. In spite of the competition of Protag¬
oras, he gained huge sums in his Sicilian (let us say his South
American) lecture tour, and has altogether collected more fees
than any two contemporary Sophists, not to speak of the older
philosophers who lost rather than made money. If he does not
lecture often at Sparta and is not invited to teach Spartan
youth, it is because the Spartan law forbids foreign teaching.
Socrates’ proof, by the reasoning of the Minos and the Cratylus
that if the law of the Spartans deprives their youth of the benefit
of Elippias’ instruction it is a bad law, and a bad law is no law,
seems to Hippias to contradict ordinary language by its preci¬
se

282 A

282 B
282 C

Theaet. 180 D
Rep. 493 D 5
282 D

On Gorg. 456 A 7

282 £

283 A

Ar. Pol. 1259 a 17

283 B

Laches 182-83

284 DE
284 E

Rep. 340 E (Loeb)

92

WHAT PLATO SAID

285 BC

285 D

285 E

Hipp. Min. 369 A
286 AB

Hipp. Min. 363
A-C

286 B

286 C
On Hipp. Min.
363 AB

On 286 E
286 CD
On Laches 190 B

286 D
Euthyph. 5 A
Ale. I. 114 B

Phaedo 89 C

286 E

287 B s
Rep. 393 D 6

287 AB

287 C 4
Prat. 330 C 1

sion, but he is quite willing to accept it. The Spartans them¬
selves like to hear him talk, not about mathematics and astrono¬
my and his other specialties, but about the genealogies of heroes
and the founding of cities and other archaeological topics which
he has been compelled to get up for their sake. Socrates thinks
that he is lucky that the Spartans did not ask him to recite the
list of the archons of Athens or the popes of Rome. But Hippias’
art of memory enables him to repeat fifty words on one hearing.
Hippias also has a beautiful lecture beautifully phrased on fine
and beautiful pursuits for youth, which he puts in the mouth of
Nestor, advising Neoptolemus about his post-war career after
the fall of Troy. He is going to deliver it at the request of
Eudicus in the school of Pheidostratus, and urges Socrates to
attend and bring friends who are good judges of a speech. That
shall be as God pleases, Socrates evasively replies. But now he
has as usual one little difficulty to propound. He has a friend
who, when he praises some things as fine and beautiful and cen¬
sures others as base and ugly, asks him rudely how he knows
what is beautiful unless he knows and can tell what beauty and
the beautiful is. Unable to answer this question, he resolved to
take his problem to the first wise man he met and Hippias’
coming is opportune. He will teach Socrates, and thus equipped
Socrates will renew the battle with his critic. Hippias, like other
interlocutors of Socrates, is confident that the little problem
which puzzles Socrates will be a slight thing for him to answer
out of the great store of his wisdom. But Socrates, keeping up
the fiction of his disputatious friend, which is sustained perhaps
to exaggeration throughout the dialogue, humbly petitions to
be allowed to impersonate that caviling disputant and interpose
such objections as he might raise. With this understanding the
quest for a definition begins.

Socrates illustrates his meaning in a terminology which recalls
or anticipates the Meno , and like the Euthyphro seems to imply
the theory of ideas. Justice is something. Things are just by
justice, good by the good, beautiful by the beautiful. What is
the beautiful? Hippias, like other novices, does not understand
the nature of a definition. But his misapprehensions are grosser
and require more insistent correction than those of Meno, Eu¬
thyphro, Theaetetus, or even Polus. He cannot distinguish

HIPPIAS MAJOR

93

beautiful from the beautiful, and says a pretty girl is beautiful. 287 e
Socrates replies that his friend will insist on a definition put in
the form: If beauty is what, are these things beautiful? The
statement that a pretty girl is beautiful does not meet this re¬
quirement, for the objector will go on to ask if a beautiful mare 288 bc
or a beautiful pot is not beautiful. Hippias is shocked at the use
of such vulgar words on so high a theme. That is his way, says 288 d
Socrates. Pie is not dainty, just one of the rabble and cares only
for the truth. Socrates explains again that he does not want an
instance but a definition. The beauty of any particular thing
is relative. The most beautiful ape, says Heraclitus, is ugly 289 a
compared with man, and it may be that the wisest man is an ape 289 b
in the sight of God. What is beauty itself? Hippias’ answer was ReP. 479 a 5
a thing that is no more beautiful than ugly. What is the form, 2s9 d 4
the presence or accession of which always makes a thing beauti- o9n PhLdo I00 d
ful ? Gold, replies Hippias, misapprehending again, as grossly as
the Sophist in the Euthydemus. But gold is beautiful only where 301 a
it is fitting. Phidias did not make the eyes of his Athena of gold. 290B
Perhaps that which is fitting or becoming is the beautiful. But ReP. 420 cd
a figwood spoon is more fitting than gold to a beautiful bowl 290 cd
full of beautiful pea-soup, objects Socrates in Aristophanic vein. i?0 Frogs 62
Hippias is shocked again. But Socrates insists on a definition 291 d
that will hold true always and everywhere, and Hippias, again ReP. 339 a (Loeb)
misunderstanding, affirms that it is always and everywhere fine
and beautiful for a man to live rich, in health, honored by the Meno77B
Greeks, and attaining old age bury his forbears beautifully and
be buried beautifully and magnificently by his offspring, which
sounds like an anticipatory parody of Aristotle’s definition of
happiness. Would it be beautiful for Achilles and other de¬
scendants of gods, the objector asks, to be buried after their
forbears? Hippias is helpless and unteachable and Socrates, re- 292 e
porting his anonymous friend, is compelled to make suggestions
himself and ask leading questions even more obviously than he 293 d
does in some other dialogues. The right kind of definition, he 0nEff“thyph ”
suggests, is that which we chanced upon when we spoke of what
is fitting. Perhaps the fitting is always and everywhere and ab¬
solutely beautiful, and is the form whose presence makes all 294 a
things beautiful. Yet in fact there is no agreement among men

94

WHAT PLATO SAID

294 D
On Euthyph. 8 D

294

295 C ff.

296 D ff.
297 E

295 A
297 E

298 E (?)

299 E
Rep. 346 C

300 B

300 C 10

300 D

301 B

and all strife arises from difference of opinion about what is
really beautiful and fine (honorable).

From this point on the lessons in elementary logic cease and
the dialogue becomes an apparently vain but extremely sug¬
gestive examination of possible theories of aesthetics. The suc¬
cessive hypotheses proposed and rejected are: (i) beauty is the
becoming, the befitting; (2) beauty is the useful, the effective;
it is power; (3) beauty is what is useful and effective for good;
(4) beauty is what gives pleasure through the two noblest
senses, sight and hearing.

Each of these definitions is refuted, sometimes by apparently
fallacious arguments. Throughout the discussion of these defini¬
tions Hippias sometimes enters into the game with apparent in¬
terest, and is treated with friendly courtesy by Socrates in spite
of some interludes of mockery. If Hippias could only go off by
himself and reflect on it in solitude he could answer the question
more certainly than certitude itself. But the impatience of Soc¬
rates cannot wait for that. The most amusing of these inter¬
ludes takes its start from Socrates’ argument against the defini¬
tion of beauty as pleasure through eye or ear. The cause of the
beauty, he argues, cannot be pleasure, for pleasures differ only
quantitatively. It cannot be the fact that the pleasure comes
through eye or ear. For if the eye were the cause, the ear would
not be the cause. It must be something common to both but
predicable of neither by itself. That strikes Hippias as a mon¬
strous paradox. He is sure that nothing can be true of two
things that is not true of either singly. Yet there flit before
Socrates’ vision many dim apprehensions of examples which he
distrusts because of Hippias’ superior wisdom. The false hu¬
mility of Socrates’ irony lures Hippias on to vary the reiteration
of his assurance that nothing can possibly happen to two things
that happens to neither. The art is that of the modern story¬
teller who prolongs the dulness of his preliminaries to heighten
the surprise of the delayed point. The trouble with you and
your associates, Socrates, Hippias finally protests, is that you
abstract from reality and separate off the beautiful and other
entities and mince them up in your arguments and so the great
natural continuities and corporeal totalities of existence escape
you. So irrational, inconsiderate, silly, and thoughtless you are.

HIPPIAS MAJOR 95

And thus at last we are brought to Socrates* humble confession
that he has hitherto been so foolish as to suppose that he and
Hippias are both two, though neither is, and that they are both
nice and even and not odd or superfluous, which is not true of,
either taken singly. The incorrigible Hippias is neither con¬
vinced nor abashed, and after some further discussion by Soc¬
rates of the possible meanings of the last definition, his final
comment is: Now what is all this, Socrates, but the cheese par¬
ings and splinterings and shavings of logic chopping? The really
worth-while thing is to plan and shape a fine speech before a
court or a council and, having persuaded them, to carry off the
prize of salvation for yourself, your money and your friends.
Make that your aim and dismiss this picayunish trifling with
words, this driveling nonsense that will only bring you the repu¬
tation of a fool and a ninny. Socrates* own conclusion is the
proverb xaXe7ra ra KaXa, “The beautiful is not easy.**

Though there may be some awkward transitions and a few
un-Platonic expressions in the dialogue, there are no un-Platonic
thoughts or methods. At most it might be argued that the
ideas and terms common to the Hippias and other dialogues are
too many, and too definitely related to the theory of ideas for
a minor dialogue of its presumed date.

301 D ff.

304 A

Gorg. 511 D

304 E
Rep. 435 C
497 D
Crat. 384 B

ION

The Ion , Hippias Minor , and Protagoras are sometimes
bracketed as the work of Plato's prentice hand and representa¬
tives of his youthful exuberance and satire, but devoid of philo¬
sophical content. This is a gross misconception of the Protago¬
ras , which experienced judges of both literature and philosophy
regard as not only a masterpiece of art, but as one of the richest
in its suggestions of all the Platonic writings. Of the compara¬
tively slight Ion and Hippias (they are only about half as long
as the Lysis , Laches , and Charmides ), it need only be observed
that while they begin abruptly with no introductory setting of a
scene from Athenian life, and while a Socratic discussion with a
Sophist naturally takes a more satiric turn than a conversation
with youths of the best Athenian families, the thought is not so
notably inferior as to forbid our classifying them with the Char¬
mides, Laches , and Lysis and with the Apology , so far as it
touches on philosophy.

On Pliaedo 76 B If knowledge must always imply the ability to render a rea¬
son, many of the most valued accomplishments from politics to
poetry must be designated respectfully or ironically as gifts of
nature, instinct, or inspiration. In the Ion the irony so far pre¬
dominates, and so unsparing is the satire of the rhapsode, whom
Socrates congratulates on the prize that he has just borne away
530 ab from the Asclepieia at Epidaurus and flatters with the hope of
like success at the Panathenaic festival, that many scholars
have pronounced the composition unworthy of Plato or at best
a youthful skit redeemed by one or two fine passages. Goethe,
we are told, was shocked by the crudity of its fallacies. On the
other hand, Shelley greatly admired and translated it, and it has
been a favorite with many critics and poets, seduced perhaps by
534 b the description of the poet as a light, airy, winged, divine thing,
533 d and by the ingenious comparison of Homer to a magnet that
magnetizes in turn the dependent rings of interpreters and re¬
citers who transmit his inspiration and virtue to the ultimate
hearer or reader.

96

ION

97

The ridicule of Ion is perhaps a little sharp, but not appreci¬
ably harsher than that of Euenus in a casual paragraph of the
Apology, or that of Polus in the Gorgias, or that of Thrasyma- ^3Be
chus in the first book of the Republic, or that of Anytus in the 90 a
Meno. We do not know how great may have been the provoca- H a
tion. Xenophon says that everybody knows that the rhapsodes
are the silliest of mankind, and a popular reciter of Homer at
Athens may have been, apart from his success in his profession,
as tempting a butt of satire as any popular movie hero at Holly¬
wood might be today. Plato may have found the complacent
boasting of Ion about the huge audiences thrilled by his voice,
whose tear-stained faces looked up at him, as irresistible a 533 e
temptation to the writing of satire as Juvenal did the litter of sat.i. 32
Matho filled with his corpulence. In any case, the main idea of
the dialogue does not differ appreciably from that of the con - 99-IOO
elusion of the Meno and from the passage of the Apology in 22a-c
which Socrates describes how he put the poets and the politi¬
cians of Athens to the test and found that they could render no
account of their virtuosity.

Ion has this special gift of so interpreting or reciting Homer
as to move great audiences to tears. He, it appears, is a special¬
ist comparable in a way to men who have written one good
poem or made one eloquent speech. He cannot so interpret 534 d
other poets. He cannot answer Socrates’ argument that poetry
as an art is a unit, a whole like other arts, that a good painter symp. 223DS
can judge all painters, a good sculptor all sculptors, a good mu- 532 c-533 c
sician every kind of music. But he insists on the fact that he can
interpret Homer and cannot expound other poets or do the other
things that Socrates expects of him. It is for Socrates to explain 532 c
how that may be. Here again we have a distinct anticipation of
a recurrent Platonic thought or method. Plato often recognizes
that the breakdown of a hypothetical explanation of a fact does
not do away with the fact, and that, as Aristotle and many
others say after him, an error is satisfactorily refuted only
when we have explained its cause. onProt.3S3A

Ion then, who, like the subordinate speakers in Plato’s latest 644 cd
work, the Laws, is aware of his own simplicity, but takes pleas- 673 c
ure in listening to the wise, is here the mouthpiece of this de- 532 d
mand for a psychological explanation of the paradox of the spe-

98

WHAT PLATO SAID

cialist’s peculiar gift combined with incapacity to render a ra¬
tional account of it or to apply elsewhere the knowledge which
it seems to involve; and the explanation which Socrates gives
him is in substance the famous theory of poetical inspiration
244-45 or madness developed in the Phaedrus , coupled, as I have al¬
ready said, with the applications of the theory as presented in
Mcno 99 c~e the Apology and the Meno. The slight differences in the expres¬
sion of the idea here are no greater than was unavoidable in its
incidental use in a sketch limited to seventeen pages, and it is
uncritical to exploit them in support of theories of Plato’s evolu¬
tion.

S36 d Ion at first scorns the notion that he is mad and beside him-
535 b-d self when, in reciting Homer, he pales and trembles like the ac¬
tors who spur the sides of Hamlet’s intent. But he is quite help¬
less and flounders wildly when Socrates with his usual insistence
on the definition of vague pretensions presses him to tell about
536 Eff. which of the subjects that Homer treats of he claims to be an
expert. He is not a charioteer, a physician, a fisherman, a
prophet, a pilot, or a carpenter. He, however, grasps at the
540 d suggestion that since Homer deals chiefly with war he may be
a general potentially if not actually, since no one has ever called
541 cd for his services in that capacity. In their horror at the crudity
of the satire here commentators overlook the significant fact
that the general, the master of the military art, is one of the
rivals who are said to be mistaken for the true statesman in
Plato’s later writings as they have been in the history of the
United States. We have here a real if slight confirmation of the
unity of Plato’s thought.

However that may be, Ion finally acquiesces in Socrates’ ex¬
planation. Since it is evident that his knowledge of Homer is
not science, he is willing that it should be called inspiration and
that he himself should be styled not a scientific but a divine
542 b interpreter of Homer.

The satire after all is little more than the irony and the Greek
frankness that characterize all Socratic conversations. An em¬
inent scholar discovers rudeness in Socrates’ remark when Ion
539 e contradicts himself, “No, you don’t. Are you so forgetful? ....
A rhapsode should have a good memory.” But Socrates else¬
where contradicts a self-contradictor in the same style, and he

ION

99

habitually pleads his own defective memory for long rhetorical
speeches while ironically commenting on his interlocutor's fail¬
ure to remember the point of the argument. The impressiveness
of Ion's description of the emotions which he shares with his
audience may be marred for some readers by the cynicism of his
avowal, “If I dismiss them crying I shall laugh for the money
I gain, but if laughing I shall weep for the money I lose." But
there is an exactly similar conceit in Dickens' Hard Times .
“Sissy's father was a clown. ‘To make the people laugh?' said

Louisa . ‘Yes, but they wouldn't laugh sometimes, and

then father wept.' " Ion's final complacent acceptance of the
epithet “divine," theios , is thought to be an excess of satire of
which the maturer art of Plato would not have been guilty. But
that again is to forget that the Greeks used theios , as Cicero
used divinns , much more freely than we do the word that
translates them. Plato in the Protagoras speaks of Prodicus as
theios with at the most a touch of friendly irony, and the
Meno , the Laws , and the Republic employ the word where we
should hesitate to use “divine." Ion's acceptance of some of
Socrates' conclusions is perhaps an example of the Greek will¬
ingness of the personages of Aristophanes and the interlocutors
of Socrates throughout the dialogues to enter into the spirit of
the game. But however that may be, his half-belief that his
Homeric knowledge of what is fitting and becoming for every
type of character to say under all conditions makes him an ex¬
pert is not necessarily much more naive than the assertion of
Mark Twain and other modern novelists that the native novel¬
ist is the only true sociological expert, or than Corneille's esti¬
mate of himself as reported by the French critic Brunetiere
( Epoques , p. 105): “Corneille se piquait de connaitre a fond
l'art de la politique et celui de la guerre." Finally, the conten¬
tion that there are no ideas in the Ion may be further answered
by the bare enumeration in the notes of some of the interesting
suggestions in which it coincides with or anticipates “later" di¬
alogues or Aristotle.

535 e

316 A

81 B, 99 CD

On Hipp. Maj.
294E

540 B

CHARMIDES

153 A

On Laches 180
BC

153 B

153 D

154 C

Phaedr. 251 A 6
Xen. Symp. I. 8
154 D

154 E

On 156 E

Gorg. 464 A
504 BC

155 A

Tim. 21 BC

Lysis 206 CD

155 B

155 c

Lysis 207 B
Euthyd. 274 BC

Socrates, speaking in the first person, narrates how he re¬
turned to Athens from the siege and battle of Potidaea in the
year 432, and, gladly entering one of his favorite haunts, the
palaestra of Taureas, opposite the precinct of Basile, was eager¬
ly greeted by a mixed company of acquaintances and a few
strangers. His mad disciple, Chaerephon, sprang up to meet him,
questioned him about the battle and the friends who had died
there, and conducted him to a seat by the side of Critias that he
might tell the whole story. When this was done, Socrates in
turn inquired about the state of “philosophy” at Athens and
what young men had become prominent for intelligence and
beauty. The reigning beauty, said Critias, glancing at the door, is
just entering with a troup of admirers. It is Critias’ cousin Char-
mides, whom Socrates remembers as a promising boy, not yet
out in society. Socrates, who always represents himself, more or
less ironically, as having a “weakness for the fair,” is himself
disturbed by the beauty of Charmides, whom all the others,
even the smallest boys, gaze upon as a statue. Fair as his coun¬
tenance is, says Chaerephon, with a characteristic Greek dis¬
tinction, his body, stripped for exercise, is more beautiful still.
Socrates, as is his way, asks if he is equally beautiful in soul, as
indeed is to be expected from the scion of such a family. He is,
says Critias. And Socrates proposes to strip and examine that.
He is surely old enough now to be willing to engage in discus¬
sion. Yes, he is a lover of wisdom, a philosopher, Critias replies,
and in the opinion of his friends and himself has a gift for poet¬
ry. As might be expected of a descendant of Solon, Socrates
adds.

They arrange a playful plot to present him to Socrates.
Critias sends a slave to summon Charmides on the pretext that
he wishes to introduce him to a physician who will cure the
headache of which the boy has lately complained when rising in
the morning. Charmides comes and there is much laughter and
jostling of the throng of admirers striving to get as near as pos-

IOO

CHARMIDES

IOI

sible to him. Socrates himself is disconcerted by the nearer
presence of Charmides, the frank direct gaze of his wide-open
eyes, and the disarray of his garments that reveals a glimpse of
his beautiful body. Socrates is reminded of a verse of the poet
Cydias on the danger of bringing a fawn before a lion, and an¬
ticipating an image that Plato will elaborate in the Republic ,
feels himself momentarily possessed and in the clutch of such a
wild beast. However, he pulls himself together, and in reply to
Charmides’ question says that he does possess a simple, a sov¬
ereign remedy for the headache, which will operate only if em¬
ployed together with a certain spell or incantation. “I’ll take a
copy of your incantation then,” says the boy. “If I please or
not?” “If you please, Socrates.” “So you know my name?” “I
ought to, for my comrades often speak of you, and I remember
your visits to Critias.” Socrates is delighted, and feels more free
to explain that he learned the incantation during his Thracian
campaign from a disciple of the Thracian Zamolxis, who told
him that the mistake of Greek physicians was that while they
recognized the impossibility of curing a part of the body without
treating the whole, they did try to treat the body apart from
the soul, which is the source of all good and evil to the body.
The incantations or spells for the soul are fair reasonings or dis¬
cussions which engender sobriety and temperance, and so
health. Socrates had promised to treat no one for the headache
who did not first submit his soul to treatment. “Without that
I can do nothing for you, my dear Charmides.” “The head¬
ache,” opines Critias, “is a godsend if it is to procure for Char¬
mides the betterment of his mind and the benefit of Socrates’
teaching.”

Charmides is not only beautiful in body, but temperate in
soul. Socrates repeats his praise of the family of Charmides and
Critias (which is in a sense Plato’s own), celebrated by the poets
for virtue and what men call happiness, and finds a transition
to the theme of the dialogue in the consideration that if Char¬
mides already has temperance he does not need the drug and
the charm, or any spells of Zamolxis or Abaris. And since he
blushes and says that it would not become him either to con¬
tradict his friends or to praise himself, shall we inquire together
whether he really possesses temperance? The “presence” of

ISS d

155 E

Rep. 588-89
Xen. Symp. 4. 28

156 A

On Laches z8x A

156 D

On Crito 44 B

156 B

156 E

157 A

157 B

On Pliaedo 63 E
On Euthyph. 6 C
157 C

157 D

158 AB

158 C

On Lysis 204 B
Xen. Mem. 3. 7

158 D

102

WHAT PLATO SAID

158 E

159 A

159 B

159 D
159-60

On Hipp. Min.
367-68
On 159 D

160 £
On Euthyph. 12

AB

Od. XVII. 347
Laches 201 B

161 A
161 B

Class. Phil.,
XV, 300

Rep. 443 CD
(Loeb)

161 E

temperance must give rise to some perception which in turn will
beget an opinion about its nature and quality. Can the boy de¬
fine temperance? He must have some notion, and as he speaks
Greek he can tell it.

We thus at last arrive at the typical theme of the minor di¬
alogues, the quest for a definition of a virtue. Sophrosyne , ven¬
tures Charmides, after some demur, is doing everything in or¬
derly and quiet fashion. It is in sum a kind of quietness. This
does express one aspect of a word which modern scholars find as
difficult to define as Charmides did. As a definition it is for the
present purpose refuted by the stereotyped argument that a vir¬
tue must by hypothesis be a fine and good thing, and quietness,
slowness, whether of mind or body, as induction from many ex¬
amples shows, is not always preferable to quickness, and is
therefore not always good.

A second definition identifies it with another untranslatable
Greek word, aidos, modesty, the sense of shame, respect for
others' opinions. This is briefly disposed of on the same princi¬
ple by the Homeric line: aidos is not a good thing for a beggar.
Charmides then remembers that he had heard from someone
that sophrosyne is minding one's own business. “Was the some¬
one Critias, you rascal?" asks Socrates. “Does it matter who
said it?" the boy replies. “Not at all," admits Socrates. “The
question is, is it true?" The phrase ra eavrov irparreiv , doing the
things of one's self, was a term of praise among conservative
citizens and usually in Plato. It distinguishes the ordinary sober
citizen from the busybody and the meddling politician. Taken
literally, it may be forced to mean the negation of the economic
division of labor, making one's own shoes, baking one's own
bread. Symbolically it may signify the higher division of labor
in society and the soul of man, whereby everything confines it¬
self to the function for which it is naturally fitted. The Republic
makes use of these distinctions and is perfectly clear about
them. There is no reason to suppose that Plato did not under¬
stand them when he wrote the Charmides. But Charmides , part¬
ly in order to draw Critias into the discussion, lets himself be
baffled by Socrates' insistence on the contradiction of the divi¬
sion of labor in the phrase, which would again prove the virtue
not a good thing. The formula ra eavrov irparreiv must have been

CHARMIDES

103

meant as a riddle, but Charmides cannot or will not divine its
meaning. Perhaps the author himself did not know what he
meant, he says with a sly glance at Critias.

The piqued Critias, who has with difficulty restrained himself
thus far, intervenes: “Because you can’t divine, do you think
the author of the definition equally ignorant of his meaning?”
And Socrates, assuming that Critias undertakes to maintain the
thesis, asks him how he reconciles with his definition the ad¬
mission that those who, for instance, make other people’s shoes,
that is to say, not the things of themselves, may yet be sober-
minded. Critias takes refuge in a distinction between make and
do , which Socrates suspects him of having learned from Prodi-
cus, and a no less subtle but edifying misinterpretation of Plesi-
od’s “Work is no reproach,” which he takes to mean “No kind
of work is a reproach.” Socrates as usual is willing to allow any
terminology, including the identification of “own” with “good,”
provided the meaning is clear. Critias says his meaning is that
the doing (rather than the making) of good things is sophrosyne.
Socrates raises no objection to this, but with abrupt transition
asks whether the sober-minded man can be unaware that he is
sober-minded.

From here to the end the dialogue involves so much meta¬
physical subtlety that some critics have pronounced it late,
some spurious, and many feel the same distaste for it that they
do for the subtler parts of the Theaetetus .

The specialist who does another’s business is sophron , Critias
has admitted, yet he does not know whether his action is bene¬
ficial. The physician heals but does not know whether it is de¬
sirable to heal a particular patient. That is, by the Greek idiom,
“I know-thee-who-thou-art,” he does not know-himself-wheth-
er-he-acts-beneficially. Critias is willing to take back any error
into which he may have fallen, but insists that sophrosyne is
essentially knowing one’s self and knowing what one can and
cannot do, what one knows and does not know. That is the
meaning of the famous Delphic inscription, “Know thyself.”
Critias is ready to wipe the slate of the preceding discussion and
make a fresh start and defend the proposition against Socrates.
As usual Socrates protests that he knows nothing and is only a
seeker. If sophrosyne is knowledge, it is a science of something.

162 AB

162 C

Rep. 336 B
Gorg. 461 B
162 D

Od. XXI. 171
162 E

163 A
163 D

On Laches 197 D
163 C

On Syrap. 205 E
163 D

164 A

164 AB

164 C

On Euthyph.
9 CD

164 D

164 DE

165 AB
165 B

104

WHAT PLATO SAID

165 c

Gorg. 450 D

Polit. 258 DE
Eth. Nic. 1094 a
4-5
165 E

166 A

166 C

166 D
Rep. 528 A

Phaedr. 276 D

167 A
On 165 AB

Cf. 159-60

167-68

169 A
169 C
Prot. 335 AB
Rep. 338 A 6

169 D

171 D

173 D 6
I7I-I73

172 D

We know the work of the science of health, medicine. What good
work does sophrosyne as the knowledge of self accomplish? Cri¬
tias, seizing on the literal meaning of work , points out, as Plato
does in the Gorgias and the Politicus , and Aristotle after him,
that there are many arts, as, e.g., calculation and geometry,
which in Mill's phrasing of it “do not produce utilities fixed and
embodied in material objects.'' That may be, Socrates admits,
but we can always say of what they are arts. What is the spe¬
cific object or matter of sophrosyne ? Sophrosyne differs from the
other arts, Critias distinguishes, in that it is of itself as well as
of other things. Socrates must be aware of this, but he is argu¬
ing for victory. Socrates protests that the refutation of Critias
is incidental to his real interest in the subject. He examines the
subject for his own sake, or perhaps for the sake of his friends
as well. To know the nature of things is in the interest of all
men.

Let us make a fresh start and ask first if it is possible to know
what you know and what you don't know — if there is any
knowledge that knows itself. Induction seems to show that it is
not so in other things, that no art, no sense, no science, no facul¬
ty, exercises itself upon itself. This argument leads up to the
metaphysical problem of Aristotle's voijcns vorjcre cos, the thought
of thought, as I have elsewhere shown. Plato says of it, as he
says of the metaphysical problem of the Parmenides , that its
solution calls for a great man indeed. Critias finds Socrates' be¬
wilderment as infectious as a yawn, but, being concerned for his
reputation with the audience, tries to conceal his confusion;
and in order that the discussion may continue, Socrates pro¬
poses to postpone the puzzle and concede for the sake of the
argument that there is such a thing as knowledge of knowledge,
and so proceed to inquire whether this knowledge of knowledge,
or knowing one's self, is the same as knowing what one can and
cannot do, and even if we waive this difficulty, whether knowing
what one can and cannot do is beneficial. Critias reaffirms the
fundamental Platonic principle which Socrates has called in
question, that if we know what we can and cannot do we shall
trust experts in matters whereof we are ignorant and so all
things will be well done and we shall do and fare well. Butin
order that the definition may fail and the minor dialogue con-

CHARMIDES

I05

elude with an avowal of Socratic ignorance, the Platonic Soc¬
rates here will not even concede that. The experts themselves,
he again argues, may do their own work well, but they do not
know whether and when it is well that it should be done. They
do not know the good, that is. We are baffled and our ar¬
gument moves in a circle, Socrates concludes. If sophrosyne is
knowledge of itself only and not of the good, it cannot help us.
We have not defined the mysterious entity to which the law¬
giver gave the name sophrosyne , in spite of our many concessions
for the sake of the argument. The fault must lie in Socrates
himself, who is a poor investigator. If Charmides possesses
sophrosyne itself, he does not need the incantation. Plow can I
know whether I possess it or not, the youth modestly replies, if
neither you nor Critias can discover what it is ? But I am willing
to listen to your spell, your incantation, until you are satisfied
with me. Thus this dialogue, too, concludes with the under¬
standing that the youthful interlocutor is to benefit by associa¬
tion with Socrates and be the daily hearer of his words.

We have already touched on some of the reasons why Plato
may have chosen in the Charmides to carry the negative dialec¬
tic farther than in any other minor dialogue. Sophrosyne is a.
difficult and puzzling word and virtue, as Plato himself says in
the Republic and in the Laws. The association with the phrase
rd eavrov rparreiv and the idea of self-knowledge suggests dis¬
tinctions and metaphysical problems some of which are worked
out in the Republic and in the Theaetetus , but the fuller discus¬
sion of which would have taken disproportionate space here, and
indeed transformed the entire nature of the dialogue. And
whatever the partial truth of the definitions proposed, it was
evidently the design of this minor dialogue from the start that
the interlocutors should be unable to make necessary distinc¬
tions and that all definitions should be made to appear to fail.

Unity, p. 17
174 CD

174 BC

175 B

175 D

175 E

176 B

157 C

Laches 200 CD

On 159 B
Rep. 430 D ff.
Laws 627 A, 696

LACHES

The scene of the Laches is an Athenian palaestra about the
year 420 during the Peloponnesian War. A group of whom five
or six are named have been witnessing an exhibition of the “art
of fighting in heavy arms” by one who claims to be a pro¬
fessional teacher of the art. The dialogue is not narrated but
presented in the direct dramatic form. Lysimachus and Mele-
sias, “the unrenowned sons of the illustrious statesmen Aristi¬
des and Thucydides,” wish to consult about the education of
their sons two Athenian generals, Nicias and Laches, who they

178 b believe will advise them sincerely and not merely try to divine

their wishes as too many counselors do.

The two old cronies have no such deeds to boast of to their

179 c sons who dine with them as their own fathers achieved, and they

suspect the reason to be that their fathers, busy in establishing
the Athenian Empire and organizing the Athenian democracy,
found no time to attend to their education, but allowed them
to wanton in idleness and be spoiled. They do not wish to re¬
peat the error in the next generation. But, to speak in modern
analogies, they are at a loss to what college to send the boys, and
whether they ought to elect a course in military training. A
Gorg. 456 de friend recommended this teacher of the art of fighting in arms.

180 a What do Nicias and Laches think of the value of his instruction ?

We should not extend the modern analogy so far as to assume
that because there may now be a definite science and technique
of military training an Athenian “Sophist” eager to exploit pub¬
lic interest in the matter must in that day of simpler warfare
have had something of value to impart to the ordinary citizen-
soldier of Athens which he could not learn as well or better from
his older companions in the ranks. Still less should we assume
• that the “reactionary” mind of Plato was hostile to all endeavors

to reduce practice to science. These are purely historic questions
about which opinions were then and are now divided. The Pla¬
tonic dialogue raises the problem to philosophic significance,
first through the dramatic expression of conflicting opinions by

106

LACHES

107

the progressive Nicias and the conservative Laches, and then
by going back under the guidance of Socrates to the previous
question, what is bravery, the quality of soul which military
training is supposed to foster.

Before giving their opinions, Nicias and Laches express sur¬
prise that Lysimachus and Melesias do not consult Socrates,
who is a fellow-demesman and who habitually haunts places
where he would learn of studies suitable for the education of
youth. Socrates, Nicias adds, recommended to him Damon, an
excellent teacher of music for his son. Lysimachus apologizes.
He himself is too old to frequent the haunts of youth. He had
heard the boys talking about a certain Socrates, but did not real¬
ize that it was the son of Sophroniscus, his own old friend and
fellow-demesman. The boys, speaking for the first and only
time, assure their father that this is the very Socrates about
whom they had so much to say; and Lysimachus is pleased that
Socrates does credit to his father. “And to his fatherland as
well,” interposes Laches, “as I can testify who witnessed his
conduct in the retreat from Delium.” “Praise from a Laches is
praise indeed,” the old man rejoins, and, like Cephalus in the
first book of the Republic , urges Socrates now that they have
become acquainted to make their home his resort and get to
know the boys, and meanwhile to give his opinion on the ques¬
tion before them. Socrates demurs. He is younger than they and
would prefer to listen first to the views of Nicias and Laches.

Nicias thereupon sets forth the kind of commonplaces that
would occur to a hopeful mind in favor of any new study and
particularly of this study. It at least keeps boys out of mischief;
it is healthful exercise, it is a scientific training for war, the con¬
test in which all citizens are to be athletes. The possession of
this training makes a man more confident in actual battle and,
if this is not too trifling to mention, will make him more seemly
in his bearing and more terrifying to the foe.

Laches then opines that while it is difficult to deny the worth
of any instruction or any knowledge, there is grave doubt
whether the supposed science of fighting in arms is of any seri¬
ous value or is indeed a science capable of being taught at all.
He has observed that the self-styled professors of this art regard
the military state of Sparta as tabooed ground and make their

185 b

180 BC

180 D
180 D

180 E

181 A

181 C

Rep. 328 D

181 C

181 D

181 Eff.

182 C

182 D

On Eutliyd. 273

E5
182 E

io8

WHAT PLATO SAID

183 A

Hipp. Maj. 283 B

183 C

183 D

183 D

183 E-184 A

184 B

184 C

184 D

184 E

185 D
185 C
185 A, 183 E

On Charm. 156 E
185 B 6
On 190 B

appeal to the outlying towns of Attica. Surely if there were any¬
thing in their new teaching, the Spartans would be the first to
welcome it, just as Athens is the Mecca of all ambitious young
tragedians. Then again he has met some of these professors in
action, and, as Cicero, imitating Plato, says of the professors of
oratory who cannot themselves make a speech, a curious fatality
attends these professionals in actual conflict. This very Stesi-
leos whose exhibition they have been witnessing Laches once
saw making a veritable exhibition of himself on the deck of an
Athenian war vessel. The Athenian ship was grappling with an
enemy merchantman, and he, an exceptional warrior, was fight¬
ing with an exceptional weapon which he styled a dorydrepanon ,
a scythe attached to the shaft of a long spear. After he had
made a show of himself in ways too numerous to mention, the
scythe caught in the rigging of the enemy’s ship, and as the ship
glided by Stesileos tugged to release his weapon, running along
the deck while the spear shaft slipped through his hands until
he held on convulsively to the butt, amid the derisive clapping
and laughter of the enemy crew. And when a stone fell at his
feet and he let go of the spear in his fright and there it stuck
swaying in the rigging of the merchantman, the crew of the
Athenian warship themselves could not contain their laughter.
There may or may not be something in Nicias’ arguments, but
that is my experience, Laches sums up. The abrogation of such
special knowledge, he concludes, is an invidious thing and would
only make the claimant more conspicuous if he failed to justify
it. And the alleged science or art must have great and indis¬
putable value to outweigh this disadvantage. Since the two
counselors differ, there is a greater need, Lysimachus thinks, for
Socrates’ casting vote. The word “vote” at once suggests to
Socrates his or Plato’s favorite idea that it is expert knowledge,
not a majority of votes, that must decide so grave a question as
the education of our sons. One man who knows outweighs a
multitude of the ignorant. Deliberation is always concerned
with that for the sake of which we deliberate, not with that
which is sought for the sake of something else. The real subject
of the consultation is not this particular study but the souls of
the boys and their betterment. And they must first know the
definition of the thing about which they are deliberating, name-

LACHES

109

ly, bravery. Socrates himself is not one who knows. He is not
an expert. He has had no teacher, for he could not pay the fees
of the Sophists, who alone professed to teach virtue, and he
could not discover the truth for himself. Are Laches and Nicias
experts? They must be or they would not speak so confidently.
But can they or we verify our claim by exhibiting specimens of
our workmanship? What citizens, free or slave, have we made
better? And if they are experts, why do they differ? Or can it
be that they are going to experiment in corpore vili on their own
and their friends' sons and begin their pottery with the wine
jar?

Lysimachus says that he is too old for argument but would
gladly listen while they investigate the question in common
with Socrates, giving and taking reasons from one another. Nici¬
as is amused that Lysimachus does not know that whoever ap¬
proaches Socrates will be led around to render an account of his
soul and his way of life however the conversation may begin.
To Nicias himself, Socrates' admonitions are not unwonted or
unwanted, and in the words of Solon, he is glad to grow old
learning every day and not think that age will of itself bring
knowledge. What of Laches? He too loves instruction and is
no misologist or hater of argument, but he would add to Solon's
precept that the teacher whether old or young must be a good
man whom he can respect and from whom it will be a pleasure
to learn. From Socrates he is quite willing to learn, for in Socra¬
tes' life he has seen that harmony between a man's deeds and
his professions which is the real Dorian and the only true Greek
harmony. Socrates thinks that they will better accomplish their
purpose if they start from the beginning and define the object
of the inquiry. The purpose is to impart virtue. If we know
that the presence or accession of something will make another
thing better and can bring about its presence, we must obvious¬
ly know what that something is, or, to explain this obscure for¬
mula, if we know that the presence of vision improves the eyes,
we must know what vision is.

What, then, is the virtue the presence of which in the souls of
the boys we desire to bring about? If we know it we can surely
tell it. Or rather let us try to define not virtue as a whole but
only that part of it which is relevant to the study of fighting in

186 c

186 D

186 B

186 D

187 b

189 c

On Charm. 158 D
187 CD

On Phaedo 76 B
187 E

188 B

188 C

188 D

189 DE

On Charm. 158 E

189 E

Rep. 508 D

190 B
190 C

On Charm. 159 A

IIO

WHAT PLATO SAID

Hipp. Maj. 286 E
190 E

On Charm. 175 E
190 E

191 AB
191 BC

191 E

192 AB

Rep. 544 A

192 BC
Charm. 160 D
192 C ff.

On Charm. 159 D
192 E
On Ion 536 E

193 c

188 D
193 DE
194 A

194 B

Rep. 432 B (Loeb)

194 C
Lysis 213 CD
On Crito 46 B
194 D

arms. What is bravery? That is easy, replies Laches. The
brave man is he who keeps his place in the ranks, fends off*
the foe, and does not run away. Socrates courteously attributes
to his own obscurity Laches’ failure to answer what he had in
mind in asking the question. Laches gave not a definition but
an instance of bravery. There are other instances where brave
men advance and retreat strategically as, for example, the chari¬
oteers in Homer, the Scythian horsemen, the Spartans at Pla-
taea. Socrates would generalize bravery to include even resist¬
ance to the lure of pleasure. He wants to know the identical
quality in all instances of bravery. Laches does not understand,
and Socrates as in the Theaetetus and elsewhere extemporizes a
trivial definition as an example. Swiftness is the faculty or pow¬
er of accomplishing much in little time with voice, hands, feet,
or mind. That is its elv at, its “to be,” its “isness,” in all cases
worth mentioning. Laches apprehends. Bravery is a kind of
endurance of the soul, if Socrates wants one thing that runs
through all cases. This like the similar definition in the Char-
mides is refuted by the postulate that a virtue must be a fine
thing and foolish bravery is not fine. To be fine it must be in¬
telligent. But the question arises, What specific intelligence?
The man who does not know horsemanship or diving is braver
than he who does if he endures to fight on horseback or dive. Yet
his endurance is more ignorant, more foolish. We have contra¬
dicted ourselves and we are lacking in that Doric harmony of
which Laches spoke. For though we partake of bravery in deed
we fail of it in our words. We may at least obey the word that
bids us endure lest bravery herself laugh at us because we do
not bravely follow up the quest. Laches is unaccustomed to
such arguments, but he is interested and piqued that he cannot
grasp in speech what he is sure that he apprehends in thought.
Socrates thinks that the good hunter (like the good dog of the
modern psychologist) is the one who keeps trying. Storm-tossed
as we are, he says, changing the figure, let us summon Nicias to
the rescue. Nicias thinks Socrates and Laches are on the wrong
path. He has often heard Socrates say that everyone is good in
that in which he is wise. The brave man is good. Bravery there¬
fore is wisdom. What wisdom? Wisdom, your grandmother!
says Laches, in Greek colloquialism. That is precisely the ques-

LACHES

iii

tion, says Socrates, taking “what” in the logical sense of a de¬
mand for the specific difference that makes a definition out of
the genus. This introduces a somewhat acrimonious debate be¬
tween Laches and Nicias, Socrates occasionally intervening. It
turns at first on the familiar Socratic distinction between the
special arts and some vaguely divined higher or universal knowl¬
edge. Nicias has some Socratic ideas but he cannot quite “put
them over.” The physician may know how to heal the sick, but
he does not know for which patient it will be better to die and
for which to live. The specialist, that is, does not know the
good. Laches sneers that Nicias must mean that the prophet
is the brave man. No, rejoins Nicias, the prophets know only
the signs of future events. They know nothing of better or
worse. Laches thinks that Nicias is resorting to sophistry to
wriggle out of the confession that he is ignorant, conduct more
suitable to a court of law than in such a company as the present.
Socrates believes that Nicias is serious. We must all try to make
his meaning plainer. Evidently if bravery is wisdom, neither
the Crommyonian boar nor any lion can be brave. Laches re¬
gards that as a reductio ad absurdum of the theory, but Nicias
distinguishes. Fearlessness, confidence, daring, are not bravery.
Bravery always connotes forethought and rationality. Laches
repeats the charge of sophistry and thinks that if, as Socrates
suggests, Nicias has learned these quibbling verbal refinements
from Damon, the disciple of Prodicus, they are just what one
would expect of a Sophist. And when Socrates insists that it is
worth while to consider what Nicias really had in mind in his
use of the word, he replies surlily, “Consider for yourself.” The
discussion continues between Socrates and Nicias. Fear is an
expectation of future evil, and our definition must mean that
the brave man is he who has knowledge of future good and evil.
But knowledge or science as such is timeless. The science of
things past, present, and future is one. The prophet must not
rule the general who possesses military science but the general
the prophet. It follows that if bravery is knowledge of future
good and evil, it is knowledge of all good and evil. We have
defined only a third part of bravery, and if we correct our
definition, it will be a definition of all virtue and not of bravery
only. Laches is delighted with this failure. But Nicias thinks it

194 e

195-96

195 c

195 e

Theaet. 172 E

Eur. Rhesus 576
Theaet. 175
196 B

196 C

On Gorg. 463 D
196 E

197 B

197 D

197 E

198 B

Prot. 358 D

198 D

199 A

199 C

Prot. 329 C ff.
Laws 963

1 12

WHAT PLATO SAID

200 AB

200 B

200 CD
On Charm. 157 C

201 A
187 D

On Charm. 158 D
201 AB
201 C

human, all too human, that Laches does not mind his own igno¬
rance, provided only that his opponent shares it. As for himself,
he will correct the definition with the aid of Damon and then
teach Laches, who needs instruction sorely.

They agree more amicably in advising Lysimachus and Mele-
sias to enlist the aid of Socrates in the education of their boys,
and if he consents, to look for no other teacher. There is no lack
of willingness on Socrates' part. But as the outcome of the argu¬
ment showed him to be as ignorant as the others, he says that
their only recourse is to look for teachers and all go to school
together undeterred by either the expense or the false shame of
the fear that people will laugh at students of their age. The
company breaks up with an appointment to meet on the mor¬
row.

LYSIS

The Introduction to the Lysis suggests the banter and per¬
siflage of Romeo’s companions in Shakespeare. Socrates nar¬
rates in the first person to an unnamed hearer: “I was on my
way just outside the city wall from the Academy to the Lyceum,
when I saw at the gate, near the fountain of Panope, Hippotha-
les and Ktesippus standing in a group of young men. ‘Whence
and whither, Socrates?’ said Hippothales. ‘I am making straight
for the Lyceum.’ ‘Well, you’d better make straight for us here.’
‘Where is here and who are you?’ ” Hippothales points to an
open door, which, he explains, is a palaestra recently opened by
an admirer of Socrates, one Mikkos, whom Socrates pronounces
a very sufficient “Sophist.” It is the resort of a group who pass
the time in conversations which they invite Socrates to share.

“And who is the fair?” inquires Socrates, in the style of
eighteenth-century poetry. “Opinions differ,” replies Hippotha¬
les with a blush. And Socrates, who here as elsewhere professes
to be an expert in love, puts his own interpretation on the blush.
Ktesippus thinks it priceless that Hippothales should blush and
hesitate to name the fair when lie has been boring everybody to
death and deafness with iteration of the name of Lysis and with
compositions in prose and verse in the boy’s honor, which he re¬
cites or sings in a weird voice. Lysis, Ktesippus adds, is a boy
of noble family, known thus far by his father’s name, Democra-
tes of Aexone.

Socrates has no desire to hear the verses but in the manner
of the Xenophontic Socrates embraces the occasion to suggest
an edifying inquiry as to the kind of thing an admirer ought to
say to a boy friend for whom he feels a romantic attachment and
whose improvement and welfare he has sincerely at heart. In
short, Socrates is interested only in the substance of Hippotha¬
les’ conversation, the ideas. That is the funniest part of it, con¬
tinues the irrepressible Ktesippus. He can find nothing to say
but the outmoded commonplaces of an old-fashioned Pindaric
0(je — the victories of the family at Delphi and the Isthmus and

Phaedr. 227 A

204 B

Phaedr. 242 E 5
227 D 1

204 D

204 E

Symp. 209 BC
Phaedr. 252 DE

WHAT PLATO SAID

Nera. X. 48
206 AB

210 E
206 C

206 D

206 E
Charm. 155

207 A

207 B
210 E
Euthyd. 274 BC

207 C

207 D

207 D
Laws 662 E

210 B
Euthyd. 282 A 6

Laches 194 D

211 A

114

Nemea, and how they once entertained Heracles, the son of
Zeus. Socrates doubts whether indiscriminate praise is best for
the interests of either the lover or the beloved, and suggests that
if he is given a chance to talk with Lysis, he may show Hip-
pothales an example of a better and more edifying kind of lov¬
ers’ talk. That will be easy. The boy is “fond of listening,” and
if Socrates will enter and sit down and converse with Ktesippus
he will try to overhear what they are saying. It is a sort of holi¬
day in honor of Hermes, and the boys and the young men are
not separated, and Lysis’ inseparable friend, Menexenus, is a
cousin of Ktesippus.

The little plot is carried out. Entering in, they catch sight of
Lysis standing among the boys and lads with a chaplet on his
head, a fair vision, and as good as fair. When their conversation
begins, Lysis keeps glancing their way, but is too timid to ap¬
proach until his bolder friend Menexenus enters and takes a
seat beside Ktesippus and Socrates. Lysis then joins them. Hip-
pothales hides behind others, in order not to offend Lysis by a
too obvious display of devotion. A group is formed, and Socra¬
tes begins with a little banter in the style of the Xenophontic
Socrates. Which is the older of the two boys? Which is the no¬
bler? Which is the handsomer? At which they both giggle. He
will not ask which is the richer, for the possessions of friends are
proverbially common. He is about to ask which is the juster and
which the wiser, when Menexenus is summoned by the trainer
to perform some part in the religious ceremonies of the day.
This divides the rest of the dialogue between an extremely sim¬
ple, edifying discussion with the ingenuous boy and a much
more subtle, dialectical argument after the return of the more
forward and self-assured Menexenus.

From Lysis Socrates’ questions draw out the idea that it is
not his youth but his ignorance that limits his freedom. His
parents wish him to be happy and allow him full liberty in mat¬
ters that he really understands, and the moral is “get wisdom,
get understanding.” When Menexenus returns Lysis says with
charming boyish simplicity, “Tell Menexenus, Socrates, what
you have been saying to me.” “No,” says Socrates, “you try to
remember it and tell him yourself.” This reminds us of the edu¬
cational practice in old New England families of requiring the

LYSIS

XI5

children to report the sermon, or perhaps more pertinently of
other passages in Plato that imply the remembering and repeat¬
ing of Socratic discourses. It could also be interpreted as a
Homeric device to evade tiresome repetition of the same story.
Lysis, at any rate, wants Socrates to converse with Menexenus
in order to take him down a peg. He is a terrible fellow, a disci¬
ple of Ktesippus, and an eristic. So when Menexenus asks if
they don’t propose to share their feast of reason, Socrates, with
Odyssean indifference to the letter of the truth, or Aristophanic
readiness of invention, tells Menexenus that they have been
baffled by a problem which Lysis thinks Menexenus can answer.
Lysis and Menexenus are friends. Friendship is far more pre¬
cious than gold and houses and horses, but Socrates is so far
from the possession of it that he doesn’t even know what it is.
Can they define friendship? The Greek word is ambiguous, be¬
ing also used for what we should speak of as love, though pas¬
sionate love is usually eros.

A passage of the Laws explains that there is a calm equable
friendship of likes and a fierce agitated friendship of opposites,
and that when either is intense we usually call it eros> love or
passion. The Symposium points out the errors that result from
supposing love to be the beloved and not the lover. It is the
lover that embodies the true nature and psychology of love.
The Lysis plays bafflingly with these and other distinctions to
no specific result. Its dramatic purpose, as we have seen, is
probably to display the difference between Socrates’ treatment
of the ingenuous boy Lysis and his attitude toward a young
eristic like Menexenus. It reads precisely as if its philosophic
purpose were to illustrate the mental confusion that arises when
necessary and relevant distinctions are overlooked or not clear¬
ly brought out. If that is so, it may be compared, in this respect
only, with the second part of the Parmenides which, whatever
else it may mean, is a systematic illustration of the consequences
of neglecting the distinction between is the copula and is denot¬
ing existence. The confusion in the Lysis is favored by the am¬
biguity of the Greek word philos, which can be applied both to
one who has the feeling of friendship or love and to the quality
of the object that excites it.

Socrates begins by asking which is the friend, he who loves

On Laches 181 A

2 1 1 C

21 1 D

Xen. Mem. II. 4. 1

212 B

Symp. 199-201,
204 C

212 B

213 A

213 C
Laches 194 C

On 204 B
63 A

Phaedo 66 B

214 A

214 D

214 E

215 A

215 D

215 E

216 A

216 B

216 C

Tlieognis 17

1 16 WHAT PLATO SAID

or the beloved. Menexenus thinks that it makes no difference,
but Socrates shows him that one may love without being loved
in return. Horses need not love the lover of horses, or quails
the lover of quails. And babies don't love their loving parents
when they chastise them. He adds to the confusion by an out¬
rageous misinterpretation of a quotation from an unknown poet,
and from the paradox that thus those who hate us may be to us
philoi arrives at the conclusion that the friends are neither the
lover nor the beloved nor yet both. What are we to do? Per¬
haps we are on the wrong track. Yes, you are, exclaims Lysis
with a blush. And Socrates, pleased with the boy's “philoso¬
phy,'' as he is pleased by Cebes' inquiring spirit (irpaypaTeta) in
the Phaedo , and wishing to relieve Menexenus, continues with
Lysis. He says that a bypath of escape is suggested by his inci¬
dental quotation of the poets. They are the authors of our wis¬
dom. Lysis has read the poet who says that God ever leads like
to like, and he has also read the prose of writers on “nature and
the whole" who tell us that there is a necessary bond of friend¬
ship between all like things. And in this connection the popular
phrase that reprehends the unstable man who is never the same
or like himself points to the conclusion that only the good can
be truly friends. And yet Socrates as usual is troubled by dis¬
quieting doubts. What use can like have of like? What service
can like render to like? And if we substitute for like , the
difficulty is greater still. For the good man, qua good, is suffi¬
cient unto himself and needs nothing. But perhaps we are again
wholly mistaken. For Socrates remembers hearing a wise man
quote Hesiod to the effect that two of a trade can never agree
and taking this saying as the text of a magnificent development
of the thesis that friendship is always between opposites. The
dry seeks and loves moisture, the cold the hot, the full the
empty. He was a subtle fellow. Menexenus welcomes this theo¬
ry. But Socrates warns him that those masters of all wisdom,
the eristics, will spring upon us and ask if hate is not most oppo¬
site to love, which will lead the theory into the paradox that
those who hate love.

Socrates himself is dazed. Perhaps that-which-is-neither-
good-nor-bad is the friend of (loves) the good — that is, the beau¬
tiful — in accord with the old saying that the beautiful is dear.

LYSIS

”7

Socrates develops this conception of the neutral that is neither-
good-nor-bad, which we shall meet again in the Symposium.
The body, for example, is neither good nor bad, but owing to the
presence of the evil, disease, is compelled to love the good or the
remedy. A subtle digression on the meaning of presence either
illustrates the unity of Plato’s thought or indicates that the Ly¬
sis is “late.” A distinction is made between the superficial pres¬
ence of a coat of paint, for example, and the indwelling presence
that really alters the nature of the thing. The neutral loves the
good when the presence of evil has not yet pervaded and viti¬
ated it and made it bad. Just as the gods and the wise do not
love or yearn for philosophy or wisdom because they already
possess it, so those whom the presence of ignorance affects with
the bad ignorance that mistakes itself for knowledge do not love ■
or desire wisdom, for they think that they possess it. The prob¬
lem is solved: The neutral loves and is the friend of the good
owing to the presence of evil.

But again a dire suspicion assails Socrates, and he fears lest
we have been deceived by putting our trust too soon in braggart
and cheating arguments. Friendship, the fy'Chov, like everything
else must have an end, a purpose, and that end in turn its end.
The series cannot continue ad infinitum. We must come to a
7 tposTor <f)l\ov j a final object of love and fiiendship of which all
others are only deceptive wraiths. But there can be nothing
beyond this first and final object for it to love as its end or pur¬
pose, and if we substitute good for dear or <f)i\ov, the puzzle re¬
mains. Suppose for the sake of the argument evil to pass away
and cease to exist. Would good no longer be loved? Such de¬
sires as are neither good nor evil would still exist, and the object
of desire would be dear (<l>l\ov). Then on the principle that
when the cause fails the effect must fail, good cannot be the
cause of friendship and love. But who knows what would happen
if good ceased to be? Is desire the cause? Desire is of what we
lack, and we lack or feel the need of what is properly our “own”
and akin to us. Love is of that. Hence the beloved must be
akin to the lover and love him in return — a conclusion to which
Menexenus and Lysis give a reluctant consent (while Hippotha-
les is crimson with delight), and which was much debated in
the courts of love in the Renaissance. But this word own or akin

216-17

217 B

On Charm. 158 E
Unity, n. 199
217 D

217 E

218 A

218 BC

218 C
On 214 E

218 D

219 C

219 D

On Charm. 169 D

220 E

221 A

221 B
221 C

Phaedr. 237 D
Ar. Rhct. 1370 a
221 DE

222 A

ii8

WHAT PLATO SAID

222 CD

223 B
Laches 201 C

Charm. 175 A 10
Charm. 176 A

Laches 193 E

may be only a synonym of the word like> which we long ago re¬
jected as the cause and explanation of friendship, and it will also
lead us to admit what we denied: a friendship of the bad in so
far as they are akin. We have been moving in a circle and have
exhausted the possibilities. Socrates is on the point of drawing
out some older person to aid them when the paedagogues or
chaperons of Lysis and Menexenus approach the group and in¬
sist that it is late and time for the boys to go home. The jolly
company at first tries to drive them away, but they are flown
with holiday wine and rude and unmanageable. So the discus¬
sion breaks off and the meeting breaks up, Socrates observing
in the manner of the Charmides that they have only made them¬
selves ridiculous, for though all three — he counts himself one of
them — are friends, they cannot tell what friendship is.

PROTAGORAS

A greater variety of topics and literary motives is combined
in the artistic structure of the Protagoras than in any other dia¬
logue except perhaps the Phaedrus or the Republic . The story is
narrated by Socrates to an anonymous comrade. He has spent
the day with Alcibiades, yet paid no attention to him because a
handsomer — that is, a wiser — man, Protagoras of Abdera, was
of the company. An enthusiastic and impetuous young friend,
Hippocrates, had knocked Socrates up and routed him out of
bed before dawn with the tidings that “Protagoras is in town.”
Socrates mars his friend’s point with the tranquil reply, “Why,
yes, since day before yesterday.” The youth, after describing
his pursuit of a runaway slave, and his delay on his return only
to sleep off his fatigue, begs Socrates to accompany him to the
house of Callias, the son of Hipponicus, who entertains dis¬
tinguished strangers. As it is still too early for that, they take
a turn in the court and Socrates tests the force of the boy by the
ever recurring problem of the earlier dialogues: Precisely what
does the great professor of things in general teach? We know
what a physician, a sculptor is; what is Protagoras? He is called
a Sophist. But Hippocrates blushes at the suggestion that he is
to present himself to the Greeks as a Sophist. He is seeking a
cultural, not a professional, education from Protagoras. But
even so he is acting rashly, for he does not know specifically in
what the wisdom of a Sophist consists. And while he would not
trust his body to a trainer without deliberation and good coun¬
sel, he is eager to submit his soul to Protagoras and spend his
parents’ money on him without consulting anybody. Yet the
risk is greater. The Sophist is a sort of colporteur or traveling
salesman of ideas and praises his own wares like any other sales¬
man. The buyer of food can carry it home in a receptacle and
take advice before using it. But the purchaser of instruction
cannot judge it unless he is a physician of the soul, but takes it
into his mind at once and is benefited or harmed. So discours¬
ing, they set out for the house of Callias. There, after Socrates

309

Theaet. 185 E

310 AB

310 C

Theaet. 143 A
Lysias I. 14

311 A

311 B

Gorg. 447 D f.

On Ion 536 E

311 CD

312 A

On Lysis 204 B

312 B

312 C

On Charm. 156 E

313 A
3i3 B

313 C

313 D

On Laches 187 B

314 A

3i4 B

314 C

120

WHAT PLATO SAID

has characteristically lingered in the vestibule, to finish a discus-
314 d sion that has arisen en route, they with some delay obtain ad¬
mission from a surly and suspicious porter and find a notable
and distinguished company of Sophists and culture-chasing citi¬
zens brilliantly satirized in Socrates’ description.

314 e And when we entered the house, says Socrates, we found

Protagoras perambulating in the peristyle, and in his train
promenaded with him on the one side Callias, the son of Hip-
ponicus, and his half-brother, Paralos, the son of Pericles, and

315 a Charmides, the son of Glaucon; and on the other hand the sec¬

ond son of Pericles, Xanthippus, and Philippides, the son of
Philomelos, and Antimoeros of Mende, who is the most brilliant
of Protagoras’ disciples and is studying to become a professor of
education. And behind them trailed a band straining to over¬
hear all that was said, most of them apparently foreigners whom
Protagoras gathers up from the various one-night stands in

315 b which he lectures, spellbinding them to follow like the Pied

Piper of Hamelin. And there were also some Athenians in the
chorus. And this chorus delighted me more than any spectacle
I ever saw in my life, to observe what beautiful care they took
never to get in front of Protagoras and in his way; but every
time he made a turn, these hearers neatly and in order divided
and wheeled off to the right and left and fell in behind with the
precision of a well-drilled platoon.

316 a Admitted to the presence of the great man, Socrates explains

their object in coming. Protagoras enlarges complacently on his

316 cd own frank practice of openly avowing his possibly invidious pro-

316 d fession and not masking it as Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, Or¬

pheus, Musaeus, Herodicus, Agathokles, Pythocleides, and
many others did under pretense of teaching something else.

317 a There is little use in such disguises, for the leading citizens are

not deceived and the multitude never perceive anything but re-
317 b peat what they are told. Protagoras himself has never suffered
317 c any harm, though he has been many years in the profession and
Meno3?Jc might be the father of anyone present. He is quite willing to
discuss Socrates’ question openly, perhaps, Socrates suspects,
because he wishes to display his new admirers to Prodicus and

317 de Hippias. The company, with Greek eagerness to hear some¬

thing new, arrange the seats for an extemporized lecture hall in

PROTAGORAS

121

the room of Hippias and the conference begins. Socrates there¬
upon repeats his interrogation of Hippocrates to Protagoras
himself. What will he do for an ingenuous disciple? What spe¬
cifically will he teach? Protagoras at first evades the question
by saying that every day in every way the boy will be bettered
by his instruction. That would be true of any teacher and all
instruction, says Socrates, and Protagoras, thus forced to be
more specific, replies with a glance at Hippias that he will not,
like some others, thrust his pupils back into the disciplinary and
technical studies of the schoolroom but will teach broadly good
counsel, the art of life, efficiency in speech and action, the man¬
agement of public and private business, good citizenship — vir¬
tue, in short. That is his “profession.” Socrates thinks that this
is a fine program. But he doubts whether “virtue,” political and
social virtue, the “political art,” as he calls it, can be taught.
If it can, why have Athens* great statesmen been unable to im¬
part it to their sons? Why does the Athenian Assembly consult
professionals only in matters of architecture and shipbuilding,
while it allows butcher and baker and candlestick-maker to pop
up and advise it on affairs of state? And why do men like Peri¬
cles have their sons taught particular arts and accomplishments
by experts but leave them to graze like freed cattle on the
chance that they may come upon virtue accidentally?

The question whether and in what sense virtue can be taught
was much debated in contemporary Athens, as we may learn
from Isocrates, Euripides, and Xenophon as well as from Plato’s
own Meno . It could be answered intelligently only by means of
the distinctions brought out in the Republic and which were pre¬
sumably in Plato’s mind when he wrote the Protagoras . Plato is
not concerned here to clear up this confusion or even to explain
the obvious ambiguity whereby “virtue” at one time means or¬
dinary morality and at another the special gifts of the states¬
man. Protagoras undertakes to remove Socrates’ doubts by a
myth or an apologue which develops into an argument. Once
upon a time the gods existed but mortal creatures were not.
When fate decreed their birth, the gods fashioned them within
the earth out of the four elements, and commissioned Prome¬
theus and Epimetheus to lead them forth to the light and equip
them for life. At Epimetheus’ request it was arranged that he

318 A

318 BC
318 DE
Cf. 311 B

318 E-319 A

319 AB

319 E
319 B ff.

319 D

319 E

320 A
Rep. 520 B
On Meno 70 A

Meno 99 B 7 fif.
320 C

320 D
Rep. 414 D

320 D

122

WHAT PLATO SAID

should distribute the equipment and Prometheus revise the dis-
321 b 7 tribution, and, not being overwise, Epimetheus or Afterthought
320 E-321 B used up the stock of nature’s gifts in arming the animals for
survival and the struggle for existence; and lest any species
32i b s-6 should perish, he gave fecundity to the weak who were the prey
321 c 5 of the strong. Man was left naked and shivering, cast forth
on the shores of life (the phrasing of Lucretius most preg-

321 cd nantly expresses Plato’s thought here). To remedy this Prome-
Crftias ^09 c theus stole the fire of Hephaestus and the arts of Athene as

Pom. 274 c compensation to man for his lack of the natural protections and
322 a defenses of the animals. Thus man, partaking of the divine, and
being the only animal that believes in gods, constructed altars
and images of them, invented articulate language and provided
322 b himself with habitations and raiment. But men, lacking the po¬
litical art, were still incapable of co-operation, organization, and
government to defend themselves against one another, and in
their warfare against the animals, and to provide for this Zeus
sent Hermes to bestow on mankind the sense of justice and the
sense of awe or reverence, the indispensable precondition of

322 c civilized life and bonds of union. These qualities are not, like

the skill in particular arts, specialized in individuals, but are

322 de common to all mankind. Hence a democratic assembly, that

will take the advice only of an architect about architecture, will
suffer any man to speak of public policies and the conduct of
life. All punishment and reprobation of wrongdoing also rests
on the assumption that all men can and must learn virtue. We

323 ab laugh at a man who boasts of the gifts of nature or fortune or

323 b pretends to be what he is not. But we expect him to affirm that

323 d he is honest, even if he is not. We pity the homely, the small,

and the weak. But we reproach and admonish those who lack
the qualities which we believe that care and discipline and

324 ab teaching impart. All punishment rests on the same belief. The

past cannot be recalled, and only unreasoning, beastlike re¬
venge would punish because a wrong has been done. The object
324 bc of punishment is to better the wrongdoer and to deter others by
his example, and this implies the belief that virtue is in our
324 d power and can be acquired and taught.

And now to drop the myth: The reason why statesmen do not
on Meno 93 a teach their sons virtue is that the teachers are all mankind. And

PROTAGORAS

123

therefore it is not surprising that the sons of great men have no
noticeable advantage over others. Throughout life we are per¬
petually admonishing one another “Do this” and “Don't do
that,” and the school with its stories of great and good men, its
poetry that inspires, its music that soothes and harmonizes the
soul, its gymnastics that make the body the efficient servant of
the mind, enforces more systematically these admonitions of our
fellow-men. Everybody teaches virtue to the boy as everybody
teaches him to speak Greek. And when the boy leaves school
and becomes a man the laws of the city continue this instruc¬
tion and draw lines for his conduct as teachers trace lines for the
letters to guide the fingers of children learning to write. These
laws are the inventions of good and wise legislators of old. They
teach men to rule and be ruled. He who deviates from the pre¬
scribed lines is chastised, or, as the Greek word denominates it,
rectified or straightened, for that is the function of justice.
Thus everybody teaches virtue as everybody teaches the speak¬
ing of Greek. And we need not be surprised that the sons of
great and good men have little advantage over others. We are
all interested in others' virtue. We envy no one proficiency in
this, and grudge no one our counsel and help. If flute-playing
were indispensable to society and the state and everybody
taught and encouraged it, everybody would play the flute well
or ill, and the sons of flute-players, unless specially gifted by
nature, would have no advantage over others. Socrates is the
pampered child of a sophisticated civilization. If he were trans¬
ported to a community of such wild and lawless savages as
Pherecrates put on the stage in his last year's play at the
Lenaea, he would yearn for the wickedness of the Benedict Ar¬
nolds and the Calibans of orderly and law-abiding societies.
But now he wants to know who teaches virtue. It is no more
possible to name the teachers of virtue than to name the teach¬
ers of speaking Greek or to discover any special teachers of the
arts which the sons of artisans pick up from their fathers and
their fathers' fellow-craftsmen. Protagoras' modest claim is
that he reinforces this general teaching a little more effectively
and so is worthy of his hire. Whenever his charge is disputed,
he invites the student to enter a temple and make oath as to the
value of the instruction, and he then asks no more.

325 CD

Rep. 363 A (Loeb)

326 A
326 AB
326 B

328 A

326 CD
326 D

On Laws 957 AB
326 E

327 B

327 A

327 BC

Meno 92 E
Apol. 24 E

328 A

328 B

At. Eth. Nic. 1164
a 2d

328 C

I24

WHAT PLATO SAID

This “myth” is plainly the composition of Plato and not of
Protagoras, otherwise Plato would owe to Protagoras the great¬
er part of his own social and political philosophy. There is not
the slightest probability that Protagoras or anyone else except
Plato could have composed it. The speech of Agathon in the
Symposium , that of Lysias in the Phaedrus , and the speeches of
Alcibiades, Critias, Prodicus, and Hippias in th t Protagoras itself
are sufficient evidence that Plato could imitate any style. This
does not mean that Plato may not have taken suggestions from
Protagoras’ treatise, “On the State of Things at the Beginning,”
or that he did not, as Philostratus says, imitate Protagoras’
solemn and supine style. It means only that the wealth, the re¬
finement, the concatenation of the ideas and the systematic
composition of the whole are Plato’s. The coincidences with
Herodotus may point to common sources for some ideas. The
coincidences with Aristotle and later writers cannot be proved
not to be due to their reading of Plato himself.

Like the speeches of Glaucon and Adeimantus in the second
book of the Republic and the speech attributed to Protagoras
in the Theaetetus , it is “a monument of the fairness of Plato’s
mind.” The case of Protagoras is put in the most favorable
light possible. It is also a striking testimony to the unity of
Plato’s thought, as the large number of precise parallels to the
political and social ideas and the expressions of later dialogues
proves. It is obviously not, as some unphilosophical and un¬
critical interpreters have maintained, a brilliant but philosoph¬
ically insignificant performance. It is rather, as critics more
widely read in the history of ideas have shown, replete with
valuable and surprisingly modern thoughts. It is obviously not,
as has likewise been maintained, merely or mainly parody and
satire of the writing and teaching of the Sophists. It is a star¬
tling and almost exhaustive anticipation of what modern socio¬
logists style the theory of “social control” exercised through
teaching, literature, conversation, custom, and law in a sophis¬
ticated civilization such as that of fourth- and fifth-century
Athens or our own. There is little or anything in it which Pla¬
to’s “later” or maturer thought would not always have accepted
as a true account of things as they are. The difference between
Plato and the Protagoras of his philosophical drama is that

PROTAGORAS

I25

Plato is not content with things as they are. Protagoras sup¬
ports the forces of social control by teaching more effectively
and eloquently the normal ethical, social, and political opinions
of average well-meaning citizens. Plato wishes to expropriate,
to “impress” as it were, these forces of social control and to en¬
list them in the service of his own ideals to be elaborated later
in the Republic and the Laws . But the exact parallelism on the
lower plane of the descriptions in the Protagoras with the influ¬
ences which Plato later proposes to convert to his own uses is
evidence that the outlines at least of his social and political
philosophy were clearly present to his mind when the Protagoras
was written.

At the close of Protagoras' speech Socrates remains spell¬
bound like Adam listening to the angel or Lucian to Nigrinus,
but finally, recovering himself, presents one little question,
which Protagoras will readily resolve. For while an ordinary
rhetor is as helpless as a book to explain his meaning, and if
asked a question goes sounding on as a bronze cup when struck
rings on till a finger is laid upon it, Protagoras is equally skilled
in long speeches and in dialectic. Socrates' question is the prob¬
lem which still occupies Plato at the end of the Laws , and which
it would not be easy to answer in a formula today. In what
sense is virtue one and in what sense many? Are the chief, the
so-called cardinal, virtues diverse names for one thing? Does
the possession of one involve all others? That is easy, replies
Protagoras. They are parts of virtue, not as one bit of gold is a
part of the nugget, but as one feature is a part of the face. But
surely justice is a something, argues Socrates, and this thing
justice is just, and the thing holiness is holy. If someone now
should ask: But did you not say that the parts of virtue are dis¬
tinct and different? I would reply that was Protagoras' state¬
ment not mine. How about it, Protagoras? Is not the thing
holiness a just thing, is it unjust? It is not quite so simple as
that, replies Protagoras; but being uninterested he adds: What
difference does it make? Let it be as you please. Socrates does
not wish to debate a concession made in this spirit, but to exam¬
ine Protagoras’ real opinion. Are not the virtues on his view un¬
like and separable? Protagoras demurs to their unlikeness. We
cannot call things unlike because they differ in some particular.

328 D

On Euthyd. 290 A
Nigr. 4 and 38
On Hipp. Min.

363 ab

328 E

329 A

Phaedr. 274-75
On Euthyd. 300 B

329 B

963-64

329 CD

330 C
330 D

330 E

331 A
33i BC

33i CD

126

WHAT PLATO SAID

Without delaying to clear up this logical problem which is
i3c-e fully explained in the Philebus , Socrates in view of Protagoras'
332 a irritation gives the argument another turn. One thing can have

332 c only one opposite. Folly is the opposite of both sophrosyne and

333 ab wisdom. How can that be unless sophrosyne and wisdom are

one? That, of course, is sophistry. If sophrosyne has two mean¬
ings, one of them may be virtually identical with wisdom while
the other is something quite different. The fallacy is obvious
275-76 and was apparent to Plato, who explicitly points out in the
277 d ff. Euthydemus that the chief source of fallacies is the double mean¬
ings of words. As an ancient critic observes, the systematic ap¬
plication of this principle was Plato's chief contribution to log¬
ical theory and practice. It was Plato, he says, who introduced
to dcaaov. It was enough for Plato's dramatic purpose here to
represent Protagoras as forced to admit the identification of one

333 b of the cardinal virtues, sophrosyne ^ with wisdom. Socrates then

enters upon an argument which, from still another meaning of
the verb a ucfrpoveiv (namely, to be level-headed or sensible),
would reach the same result by identifying the truly expedient

333 e or beneficial with the good. But Protagoras, exasperated by this

dialectic, seizes the occasion to deliver a speech on the relativity

334 ab of good. Manure, he ingeniously concludes, is good for the roots

334 c of plants and deleterious to their leaves. Olive oil is good for the
cf. 336 d skin and bad for the digestion. The company applaud and Soc-

Meno 71 c rates, alleging a bad memory and an engagement elsewhere, de-

335 c dares his inability and his lack of time to follow long speeches.
336 b 2-3 Discussion is one thing, and speech-making another. Protago¬
ras who, like Dr. Johnson, throughout regards the discussion as
a contest of wits, not a quest for truth, objects, as Attic orators

335 a do, that he cannot allow his adversaries to prescribe his method
of conducting his case. Socrates' proposal to depart and break
up the discussion calls forth a protest from the company, and

335 cd Alcibiades, Critias, Prodicus, and Hippias deliver characteristic

speeches endeavoring to reconcile or compromise this opposition
between dialectics and rhetoric. Alcibiades, the friend of Soc-
336 e rates, and by nature a vehement partisan, makes the point that
336 b f. Protagoras professes to be proficient in both long and short
speeches. Socrates admits his inability to speak at length. If
Protagoras will likewise acknowledge his inferiority in dialectic,

PROTAGORAS

127

that will satisfy Socrates. Otherwise let him meet Socrates on
his own ground and not expatiate at lengths that will make the
audience, though not Socrates, lose the thread of the argument.
Alcibiades, who like Protagoras regards the conversation as a
contest, thus says for Socrates what the infallible moral tact and
unfailing Attic courtesy that Plato attributes to him would not
allow him to say for himself. Socrates merely says that he
wishes he could make or remember long speeches, but since he
cannot, Protagoras must adapt himself to his weakness if they
are to debate. Critias the politician proposes a compromise be¬
tween the extreme partisan views. Prodicus balances and de¬
fines synonyms:

The auditors of such a debate ought to be impartial but not neutral in their
sentiments. They should listen to both impartially but take the part of the
wiser, not the worse. And I implore you, Socrates and Protagoras, to make
mutual concessions and to contravene but not to controvert. For contraven¬
tion is the argumentation of friends, but controversy is the disputation of op¬
ponents. Thus will you, the speakers, receive approbation but not acclama¬
tion from us, since approbation is the critical judgment of the mind, while ac¬
clamation may be the hypocritical flattery of the tongue. And we, your
hearers, will enjoy gratification, not delectation, for gratification is the mind’s
delight in learning and delectation is the body’s pleasure in eating.

Hippias descants on the opposition of nature and law and is
prodigal of synonyms and florid imagery: 337 cff.

Gentlemen all, we who are assembled here are friends and kinsmen and
fellow-citizens of the world by nature and not by convention. For conscious¬
ness of kind makes all like-minded men friends, but the tyranny of convention
constrains us to many unnatural deeds. Shameful indeed it were that we
philosophers of nature and wisest of the Greeks, assembled at this very center
and prytaneium [hearth-fire] of Hellenic culture and meeting in its most cul¬
tured and happy home, should show ourselves unworthy of this prestige and
height of dignity and fall to wrangling like the basest vulgar. Accept then,
Socrates and Protagoras, our mediation. Neither do you, Socrates, insist on an
overprecise, meticulous, mincing, and logic-chopping dialectic, but relax the
reins of discourse that our diction may be more splendid and copious. Nor
should you, Protagoras, spread and unfold all your canvas to the breeze and
sail forth into the vast sea of eloquence out of sight of land, nothing before
and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean. Rather ought you both to
keep to the middle of the road and choose a prytanis, an overseer and a pre¬
siding moderator to hold you to the just mean and measure of discourse.

r It is finally agreed that Protagoras may ask Socrates any
questions he pleases, and when he is satisfied Socrates in turn

336 c

335 c

335 E

336 DE

337 A ff.

On Laches 197 D

128

WHAT PLATO SAID

338 CD
On 335 A
338 E

339 A

339 B f.

339-47

339 E ff.
On Hipp. Maj.
294 E
34i D

347 DE
On Hipp. Min.
36s CD

347 D
On Symp. 176 E

348 A

274-75
Supra 329 AB

348 B ff.
Gorg. 505 D
Gorg. 457 C-
458 A

349 AC

may question Protagoras. Protagoras thereupon, true to his
conception of the discussion as a personal contest, says that the
ability to interpret the poets is a test of culture, and that he will
ask Socrates to interpret the poem of Simonides which is also
“about virtue. ” Protagoras looks for no further relevancy than
the bare word. He is not interested in definite propositions or in
the problem which Socrates had started. The poem of Simon¬
ides rebukes Pittacus for saying that it is hard to be good, and
yet goes on to affirm by implication that to become good is hard
but not impossible. What is the explanation of the contradic¬
tion? This interesting digression contributes to the general pic¬
ture of the intellectual life of Periclean or Platonic Athens, but
it contains little or nothing that bears on the main argument.
It has been endlessly discussed in the endeavor to reconstruct
Simonides’ poem. We know the poem only by the quotations
from it here. We can only conjecture whether it really contra¬
dicted itself and whether the antithesis between being and be¬
coming is read into it by Plato. And it is perhaps a matter of
opinion whether Plato himself fully appreciated the fallacious
character of the fanciful interpretations proposed in jest or in
earnest by Socrates, and by Prodicus who comes to his aid, with
preposterous distinctions which he himself would admit to be
only jests to try Protagoras. And in general we may doubt
whether Plato would or could apply to the interpretation of lit¬
erature the critical precision that marks his thought in all other
fields. The one certain Platonic opinion that emerges is the con¬
clusion that it is idle in discussions of this sort to invoke the
testimony of poets who, being absent, cannot be cross-examined,
and whose meanings will always be wrested to suit the purpose of
the quoter. Gentlemen and scholars do not need flute girls or
the borrowed voices of the poets to entertain their leisure. Their
own conversation suffices. This faintly anticipates the compari¬
son of the written and the spoken word in the Phaedrus. It is
valid for ordinary practice today, in spite of the faith of a few
critical minds that it is usually possible to determine with cer¬
tainty the true meaning of any text if the context is sufficient.
After some byplay of demur by Protagoras, Socrates, with many
conciliatory and complimentary precautions returning to his
original question, formulates again the problem of the unity of

PROTAGORAS

129

virtue as the previous discussion left it, and invites Protagoras
to restate his position, which he does to the effect that four of the
virtues are tolerably like one another, but courage is quite differ¬
ent. Socrates proceeds to identify courage, too, with wisdom by
arguments analogous to those used by Nicias in the Laches . A
mistaken, foolish, unwise confidence is not courage but madness.
Yet Protagoras has said that the courageous are the confident.
That is true, retorts Protagoras, but I did not say that the con¬
fident are the courageous. Skill or madness may inspire con¬
fidence and power.

We of course cannot infer from Protagoras' protest against
the direct conversion of a universal affirmative that the logical
principle was unknown to Plato who explicitly states it in the
Euthyphro. And it is quite fanciful to suppose that Plato in¬
tended to compliment Protagoras on the “discovery” of this
principle. Protagoras, though no match for Socrates, is repre¬
sented throughout as an intelligent speaker by all ordinary
standards, and the trifling temporary advantage that he gains
here serves to break off the argument for the identification of
courage and wisdom which was developed at greater length in
the Laches and is sufficiently sketched here for Plato's present
purpose. Some critics think that Socrates is baffled; others that
he disdains to answer so trivial a point. At any rate he goes off
abruptly on another line. He has already attempted to prove
the identity with knowledge of two of the cardinal virtues, cour¬
age and sophrosyne , and has incidentally indicated the impossi¬
bility of divorcing the third, justice, from sophrosyne or from
piety. In continuing the discussion, instead of developing the
proof that justice also is a form of knowledge, he brings forward
an argument that would establish Socrates' case for all the vir¬
tues at once. This, I think, is the most obvious but by no means
the only reason for giving the argument this turn. Knowledge,
Socrates affirms, and Protagoras concurs, is the strongest princi¬
ple in the soul and necessarily dominates passion and appetite.
But the majority of mankind do not agree with us, Socrates
says, ironically or courteously identifying Protagoras with him¬
self, but reiterate the commonplace that we know the right and
yet the wrong pursue. We must explain to them the state of
mind that they thus wrongly describe. It is really ignorance. If

349 d

Laws 630 B, E

350-si

349 E

350 C

351 ab

Eurip. Bacchac
945

On Euthyph.
12 A

35i B

Cf. 333 C

33i ab

352 B
,352 D

353 A
357 C

358 CD
355 A-C
355 DE

355 B

353 D

354 A

356 E

357 D

357 B

130 WHAT PLATO SAID

they realized that pleasure is the good they could not consist¬
ently speak of being mastered by pleasure to choose evil. For
that would be equivalent to saying that they choose pain in
preference to pleasure, or that they accept a lesser good in com¬
pensation for a greater evil. Since good and pleasure and pain
and evil are differing names for the same things, we must speak
consistently in terms of one or the other but not confuse our
minds by employing both terminologies at once. And pleasure
certainly is the good, Socrates argues, if we take into account
the perspective of near and far and include in our estimates all
the pleasurable or painful consequences of every act. This art
of measuring pleasures and pains, then, is virtue, and such an
art of measurement is a form of knowledge. The doctrine is
essentially that of Epicurus and of modern hedonism, or utili¬
tarianism, which adds nothing to it except the formula or quali¬
fication, “the greatest good of the greatest number,” which
would raise the immoralist issue: “What have the greatest num¬
ber done for me that I should prefer their good to my own?”

The precision with which Socrates states the argument is a
good example of Plato’s powers of philosophic expression at
so early a date, if the Protagoras is an early dialogue. The main
bearing of this argument on the logical structure of the Protago¬
ras as a whole is, as we have said, that, if successful, it would
prove at once the identity of all the virtues with knowledge.
But this is probably not Plato’s only purpose in introducing it
here. To the reader of the Phaedo and Gorgias it is an apparent
paradox that Socrates should maintain, with whatever qualifi¬
cations, the thesis that pleasure is the good. The conventional
explanation of the contradiction is either that Plato is only sati¬
rizing the Sophists, or that in this youthful work he developed a
paradox which he regretted ever after. Modern utilitarians, on
the other hand, regard the passage as one of the best pieces of
reasoning in Plato, and are pleased that he for once recognized
the truth. Others by selecting and emphasizing single sentences
in the Protagoras and Gorgias are able to argue that there is,
strictly speaking, no contradiction. And it is true that by press¬
ing the qualification that the good is not immediate pleasure in
itself but the final outcome of a right and true estimate of
pleasures and pains, it is possible to reconcile the doctrine with

PROTAGORAS

I31

the dialectic of the Gorgias and the psychology of the Philebus
and maintain that there is no inconsistency or contradiction.
The discrepancy of tone and feeling remains. The spirit of the
Gorgias is not that of the Protagoras . The eloquent protest in
the Phaedo against balancing pleasures with pleasures and pains
with pains instead of purging the soul and rising at once to a
higher sphere will leave on no reader the same impression as the
dry argument of the Protagoras . The bearings of the whole
problem on the Platonic ethics will be examined elsewhere.
Here we are concerned with Plato's probable literary motives
and intentions. In spite of its length, its wealth of thought, its
brilliancy, the dialogue, like the Theaetetus , concludes on the
same note of indecision and bafflement as the minor so-called
Socratic dialogues. The personified argument laughs at Socrates
and Protagoras who have ended by contradicting their own orig¬
inal contentions. Protagoras, who insisted that virtue can be
taught, is unwilling to admit that it is a form of knowledge.
Socrates, who doubted its teachability, maintains that it is
knowledge, the one thing that can be taught. We are not ex¬
pected to acquiesce in this conclusion but to think further, in
the direction of the Republic , as already said.

But apart from the philosophical implications, there is an¬
other motive, generally overlooked. It is quite certainly one, I
do not say the only, purpose of Plato to attribute hedonism to
the Sophists. It is true that Protagoras himself shrinks from the
crude avowal of this doctrine. He is, like the worthy fathers in
Rep. II, unconscious of the implications of his own teaching and
practice. But he has nothing else to offer when challenged, and
the insistence with which the challenge is addressed to the other
Sophists and their ready acquiescence in, their eager welcome
of, the unqualified formula that pleasure is the good is a further
revelation of Plato's purpose. This is confirmed by passages in
other dialogues in which Sophists enthusiastically welcome any
apparent identification of pleasure with the good. The attribu¬
tion of this doctrine to the Sophists, then, is one of the many
incidental purposes of the dialogue and one of the proofs that
Plato did not, even at the date of the Protagoras , wish the theory
to be taken quite seriously. Here, as elsewhere, the study of

361 AB

35i D

362 E-363 A

354 C

355 A

132

WHAT PLATO SAID

Plato’s dramatic and literary art is indispensable to the inter¬
pretation of his thought. The dialogue closes with Socrates’ ex¬
pression of a desire to clear up the difficulties that baffled them,
and Protagoras’ compliments to Socrates on his enthusiasm and
his method of conducting an argument. He is himself the least
envious of men and predicts future distinction for Socrates.

GORGIAS

The Gorgias holds a specially significant place in the interpre¬
tation of Plato’s philosophy because of (i) its analogies with the
Republic and more especially with Book I, sometimes called the
Thrasymachus ; (2) its apparent contradiction of the hedonist infra, P. 214-15
theory expounded in the Protagoras ; (3) its embodiment of
Plato’s bitterest idealistic mood of condemnation of the democ¬
racy that put Socrates to death; (4) the appearance in it for the
first time, as many think, of Pythagorean and Orphic ideas or 492-94
imagery and an interest in mathematics; (5) the many contro- 451 b ^
versies as to its date in relation to the Meno , Phaedo , Protagoras , 508 a
and Euthydemus . Its composition and dramatic construction
are more essential to the interpretation of the thought than is
the literary art of even such masterpieces as the Phaedo , Phae-
drus , and Symposium . Our analysis will make this plain.

As in the Meno , a slighter, more abrupt introduction than
the dramatic prefaces of the Charmides , Lysis , Laches , Protag¬
oras , and Republic plunges us at once into discussion. Socrates 447 a
and his inseparable Chaerephon enter an unnamed place a On Charm. 153 B
little too late for the feast of reason with which Gorgias has on Lysis an cd
been entertaining the company. Chaerephon, who had detained 447 b
Socrates in the agora, is ready, in the words of the proverb,
to heal the hurt himself has made. He thinks that he can
persuade Gorgias to repeat the performance. Callicles invites
them to his house where Gorgias is staying. But the conversa¬
tion apparently continues on the spot. Socrates will hear Gor¬
gias’ lecture “some other time.” Now he would like to ask him o4n Ly3sis 205 ab
a few questions. It is a part of Gorgias’ “profession” to open a 447 d
question-box, in modern phrase, after every lecture, and no one, HiPP. Min. 363 a
he later says, has asked him anything new for some years. 448 a
That’s fine, says Socrates; Chaerephon, ask him who he is. 447 cd
Chaerephon for a moment is puzzled, but, having perhaps read
the Protagoras , requires but a hint to catch Socrates’ meaning Prot. 3hde
and at once begins a typical Socratic interrogatory. But Polus,

Gorgias’ brash disciple, who is a sort of Bottom who wants to 448 ab

*33

134

WHAT PLATO SAID

play all the parts, proposes that he be substituted for Gorgias,
who must be tired. After a slight interchange of discourtesies,
Chaerephon agrees and begins in the manner of the Protagoras .
We know what a physician or an artist is; what is Gorgias?
448 c Polus replies with a flood of laudatory verbiage: “There are
many arts among mankind from experience by experiment de¬
rived. For scientific empiricism controls the situations of life by
technique, but in the absence of the experimental attitude
chance determines all. Various are the sciences of which various
men variously partake. The best men are exponents of the best.
Of these is Gorgias who represents the fairest of alL,, On this
448 d Socrates' comment is that Polus is evidently better trained in

448 e rhetoric than in dialectic. He does not answer the question, but
Euthpout 238iEcd pronounces an encomium. He does not tell what Gorgias' art is

°n but praises it. Socrates prefers to question Gorgias himself.

449 a The interruption and suppression of Polus, it may be ob¬

served, prepares us for his leading role in the second divi¬
sion, we may almost call it act, of the dialogue. The discussion
with Gorgias is conducted in terms of strict courtesy. Instead
334-35 of the controversy in the Protagoras , a studiously polite and
449 b cautious appeal from Socrates induces Gorgias to substitute the
449 c method of brief question and answer, in which he also claims to
Prot. 336 bc excel, for the long speeches to which he is more accustomed.

Though the style of Polus has been parodied, there is no parody
or dramatic reproduction of Gorgias' style. His use of the ab-
45ob stract Kvpoxns , “validification,” and similar terms may be char-
Hipp. Maj. 282 a acteristic. But he does not, like Hippias in the Hippias , or the
304 e unknown at the end of the Euthydemus , use the so-called Gor-
onsymp. 185 c gian figures. The chief, perhaps the only, touch of satire is the
449 de naive complacency with which he regards answering yes or no
as a serious compliance with Socrates' preference for short
on charm. 159 a speeches. The quest for a definition of rhetoric is conducted on
the lines of similar inquiries in the minor dialogues and, as al¬
ready said, virtually repeats the Introduction to the Protagoras.
449 d i What is the object, the matter of rhetoric? It deals with logoi or
449 e 1 discourses, says Gorgias. But so do all arts in a sense. What dif-
^45ob ferentiates rhetoric? It belongs to the arts that are solely or
A^Eth25Ni?. mainly concerned with words and not with the production of
450 d 6°?siaA-c material things. But so do arithmetic and logistic. Yet we can

GORGIAS

*35

distinguish them. The claim that rhetoric treats of the greatest 451 D7
of human afFairs is ambiguous and disputable. A familiar drink¬
ing song recites that health is best, beauty second, and riches 451 e
honestly come by third. The arts or artists who procure these 452 a-c
goods would all dispute the primacy of rhetoric. Every art aims
at some good. What is the good of rhetoric? By this persistent 452 d 2-3
pressure for specification Socrates drives Gorgias to the more
definite pronouncement that rhetoric is concerned with persua- 452 e
sion in public gatherings, such as juries and political assemblies.

From this Socrates extracts the definition often quoted by later
writers that rhetoric is the artisan of persuasion. He has a sur- 453 a
mise what that means. But if Gorgias doesn’t mind, he will ask 453 b
questions, as if he didn’t understand that so the argument may 453 c
proceed in orderly fashion to the ascertainment of truth which 453 b
he trusts is what they both desire. The renewal of the demand
for further specification then brings out the point at which Soc- 453 e
rates had been aiming: that rhetoric does not like the sciences
produce an instructive, educative, and coercive conviction, but 454 e
only a persuasive opinion. There is perhaps a touch of Aristo- 455 a
phanic humor in the technical tone of the Greek which the Eng¬
lish terminations in -ive imperfectly reproduce. We return to
the topic of the Protagor'as. In a matter of engineering the city 455 b
consults an engineer. About what, specifically, does the rhetori- Pr3223D9BC’
cian advise and persuade? Gorgias will unveil the entire signifi- 455 £D
cance and force of rhetoric. Fie meets Socrates’ difficulty pro- 460 a
visionally by pointing out that it was Themistocles who ad- Prot. 352 b
vised the Athenians to construct their harbors and Pericles who 455 e
persuaded them to build the long walls. Socrates is still puzzled.

The power of rhetoric must be something superhuman, but
what is it? Ah, if you only knew the whole story, exclaims Gor- 456 a
gias complacently. Why, again and again I have persuaded pa¬
tients to submit themselves to the knife when their physicians
could not move them. And similarly if the assembly were about
to choose a public physician the rhetorician could get himself 456 b
elected, if he chose, and the physician would be nowhere. In
short, there is no subject about which the rhetorician would not 456 c
be more persuasive than the expert before a crowd.

The thing to note here is that the subject is switched from the
definition of rhetoric to ethics by the unconsciously immoral cf. 459 c3

WHAT PLATO SAID

452 E

456 C-457 C

457 CD

457 E

458 A

458 A
Rep. 450 E-
45i A
458 B

458 C

458 D
On Prot. 317 D

Rep. 539 C 6

459 C
459 D

459 E

460 A
Meno 95 C

460 B

460 C ff .

461 A

Parmen. 135 A 7

Charm. 162 A
Prot. 361

Rep. 336 B

1 36

self-complacency with which Gorgias dwells on the advantages
that his virtuosity gives the rhetorician over the expert in any
field. An eminent modern interpreter, failing to feel this, actu¬
ally says that there is nothing in Gorgias' utterances at vari¬
ance with the most delicate modern feeling. It is true that Gor¬
gias guards himself with an apologetic commonplace of all the
professors of the new education in his day. The teacher who im¬
parts a skill, a faculty, is no more to be blamed for its misuse
than is a professor of boxing if his pupil boxes his mother. Soc¬
rates again makes a polite and deprecatory appeal to Gorgias to
bear with his dialectic. He divines a contradiction in what Gor¬
gias has said. He himself would even more gladly be refuted
than refute since it is better to be freed from error than to free
another. And there is no greater evil than false opinion about
these highest concerns. Gorgias is willing to continue the dis¬
cussion but fears that they may be detaining the audience.
Chaerephon bids them listen to the applause, and Callicles says
he never enjoyed anything so much in his life as this conversa¬
tion. Socrates thereupon elicits a contradiction by asking Gor¬
gias whether he will impart this trick of persuasion to an im¬
moral pupil, or if the pupil does not “know justice,” will teach
him that too. Gorgias of course carelessly affirms that he will
“teach virtue” too if necessary. Socrates, with what common
sense will regard as a fallacy, argues that the pupil who has been
taught justice is just and cannot misuse his rhetoric and that
Gorgias' two statements are therefore contradictory. This is
Plato’s way of bringing out the latent immorality of Gorgias'
attitude and of preparing the transition to the next stage of the
argument. The discussion, Socrates says, has issued in an ap¬
parent contradiction, which it will require a great deal of
thought to clear up. If the dialogue ended here, it would be
analogous to one of the minor so-called Socratic dialogues, or to
the first book of the Republic taken by itself, or to the Protagoras
in the light of its conclusion. But common sense of course will
not admit without qualification either that the teacher of a spe¬
cialized skill is morally bound to teach “virtue” too or that the
pupil who has been “taught justice” is necessarily just. Polus,
who, like Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic , has

GORGIAS

J37

listened with increasing irritation to Socrates’ dialectic and who
is outraged by this defiance of common sense, here intervenes in
a speech spluttering with indignation and anacoluthons:

How now, Socrates, do you yourself really believe what you are saying
about rhetoric? Do you suppose merely because Gorgias was too timid to not
make the further admission that the rhetorician wouldn’t know also the just,
the honorable and the good, and teach them himself if his pupil came to him
without that knowledge and then out of this admission a contradiction de¬
veloped in the argument which is just what you love and always purposely
lead up to by your questions — why whom do you suppose will refuse to say
that he himself doesn’t know justice and can teach others? No one but a hay¬
seed and a fundamentalist would be so tactless as to drag his moral sentiments
into the conversation in that fashion.

This intervention of Polus definitively transfers the discus¬
sion from rhetoric as such to the question of the ethical ideal.

Polus holds, with Callicles later in the dialogue, Thrasymachus 492 C
in the first book of the Republic , the speakers in Thucydides ,

La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and the
new psychology of today that moral fine language is only a
specious disguise of men’s real motives, the appetite for pleasure
and the love of power. Socrates’ tone toward him is harsher and
more rude in its irony than it is to any other personage in the
Platonic dialogues except perhaps Hippias, Ion, and Callicles.

He and Gorgias will gladly be corrected by Polus. That is what 461 c
young people are for. But Polus must eschew long speeches. 461 d
“Whaddye mean,” is the reply, “mayn’t I say as much as I 449 bc
please?” “It would be hard on you,” rejoins Socrates, “if you 461 e
alone were deprived of liberty at Athens where every man is ReP. 562 e
free to say what he will. But it would be still harder on me if I Meno86E
were not free to depart and not listen to your tirades.” Polus 462 a
professes like Gorgias to be able to ask and answer. Let him Prot.336 c
take his choice. He does and asks what Socrates himself says ££b338 CD
rhetoric is. Do you mean what art it is? It is no art; it is the
thing which Polus’ book says created art, an empiricism, a
knack, like cookery, designed to flatter and please. That may
not be Gorgias’ rhetoric, Socrates courteously adds, for they
did not succeed in defining that. But the rhetoric he has in 462 e
mind is not an art but, with latent parody of Isocrates, the af- 463 a
fair of a conjectural and enterprising spirit, a good mixer with a

Charm. 162 C

461 BC
461 B
482 D
487 AB

WHAT PLATO SAID

138

good approach. It is a subdivision of flattery, or, to be more
463 d specific, the shadow of a part of politics, the phantom of a sec-
^ifo b’ 3*olc' tion of social science, he adds in one of those obscure formulas
that in Plato are used to arrest attention and are always fol-

463 d lowed by an explanation. Polus waits for no explanation but

wants to know whether rhetoric is honorable or base. Base, says
Socrates, if I must assume that you understand. Nay, says Gor-
gias, as impolite to Polus as is Socrates, I myself don’t under¬
stand. Of course not, replies Socrates, I have not yet explained
Laws 69486E7 myself. But this colt is young and skittish. Socrates thereupon,
on charm. 156 e introducing the parallelism of mind and body that runs through
464-65 all Platonic thought, explains that there are four real and four
pseudo-arts or arts of flattery: gymnastic for the health and
beauty of the body, counterfeited or “understudied” by the
pseudo-art of cosmetics, medicine for the cure of bodily disease
and the restoration of health, imitated by cookery, which pro¬
duces the semblance of health, legislation for the health and
“justice” for the restoration of health of the soul, and sophistic,
the false understudy of legislation, as rhetoric is the false min-

464 d ister of (the administration of) justice. Like the geometricians,

465 c we may express our meaning in a proportion. As cosmetic is to
Phaedo 107-8 gymnastic, sophistic is to legislation, and as cookery to medi¬
cine, so rhetoric is to (the administration of) justice. The pseu-

465A do-arts of flattery aim at pleasure, not the good. If a jury of

464 d children or childish men had to pass on the physician and the
sat e pastry-cook, the physician would die of hunger. The false so-
46s a called arts are empiric knacks, for they can render no rational

on Phaedo 76 b account of their procedures. The multitude can make nothing

465 c of these distinctions and confound rhetoricians and Sophists.

And indeed if the mind did not preside over the body and dis-
465 d tinguish the cook from the physician, but the body measured all
Phaedo 72 c things by its own gratifications, the original chaos of Anaxag¬
oras (Polus is “experienced” in that) would be grandly realized.
All things would be jumbled together and medicine, hygiene,
46s e and cookery would be confounded. Socrates has spoken at in-
siqd consistent length, but he could not explain himself with less.

466 a Polus is uninterested in these discriminations but asks in-

Prot. 331 b sistently, So you think rhetoric is flattery? To which Socrates
sharply but somewhat unfairly replies, No, I said a subdivision

GORGIAS

139

of flattery. If you can’t remember now, what will you do when
you are older? The explicit moral issue is then raised by a ver¬
bal transition. Do you think rhetoricians are regarded as base
flatterers? said Polus. I don’t think they are “regarded” at all,
replies Socrates. And so we pass to the affirmation of those
Socratic moral paradoxes which in a more rigid pedantic form
are the paradoxes of the Stoics, as Cicero points out, and were
handed down to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Boe¬
thius. The rhetoricians and politicians do what seems good to
them, not what they really please or desire. For all men desire
the good, and unjustly won power and success are not real
goods. Strictly speaking, the power to do wrong is not power at
all, if by hypothesis power is a good thing. Men do not will the
things they do, but that for the sake of which they do them. All
neutral things, things neither-good-nor-evil, are desired for the
sake of the good, and all that men do is a pursuit of the good.
The power to kill and rob your enemies unjustly is not a good.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, though neither is
desirable. Any man with a dagger under his arm can kill whom¬
soever he pleases in the agora. Any man with a torch can burn
the Athenian arsenal, if he will take the consequences. Is that
kind of power a good? The “happiness” of Archelaus, the wick¬
ed usurping tyrant of Macedonia, who has murdered his kin
and waded through slaughter to the throne, which Polus alleges
in refutation of Socrates’ outrages on common sense, does not
move Socrates. He does not even know whether the great king
is happy. For he knows nothing of his culture and righteous¬
ness. Polus is again arguing as a rhetorician not a dialectician
and substituting witnesses or testimonies of opinion for argu¬
ment. The successful and wealthy citizens of Athens whose
names are on the monuments of the Street of Tripods or on the
dedication in the Pythion will testify that Archelaus is happy,
but Socrates wants proof, not testimony to opinions. He is pre¬
pared to maintain that the wicked will be less unhappy if pun¬
ished and so “cured” than if allowed to live out their lives in
wickedness. And he cannot be swayed from this belief by the
opinions of the multitude or by the bugaboo of the crucifixion
that may befall a righteous man unjustly condemned. Socrates
is no politician, and only last year when he happened to be

On Ion 539 E

466 B

466 E ff.

466 E

On Charm. 159 D

467 C

468 E

On Laches 185 D
On Lysis 216 C

467 E-8 B
Rep. 505 A, 505

D 11

On Phileb. 20 D

468 Eff.

469 B

509 D, 469 C
Laws 829 A
469 D

469 E

470

471 A-D

470 E

Theaet. 175 C 4
Isoc. 2. 4
Ar. Soph. El. 173
a 26

472 AB

472 E

473 B
Rep. 362 A
473 C
473 E

140

WHAT PLATO SAID

474 A

474 AB
475 E

Rep. 348 E
(Loeb)
Laws 662 A,
627 D
Polit. 306 A
174 C, 474 E
475 E

474 DE

475 A3
On Prot. 354 C-
355

Meno 78 CD,
II'.pp. Maj. 295-
96

475 BC

475 DE
476 A-D

477 BC
505 ab
On Reo. 445
AB

Laws 697 B

480 BC

480 E

481 B

482 C-486 E

president of the assembly he made himself ridiculous by his in¬
ability to put to the vote an unjust and unconstitutional decree.
If Polus will listen to argument, Socrates will secure the only
testimony for which he cares, the witness and assent of Polus
himself to the truth that it is worse to do than to suffer wrong.
Polus, less wary than Thrasymachus in the Republic , admits
that it is more shameful to do than to suffer wrong, and by de¬
veloping all the implications of “shameful” Socrates proves that
wrongdoing must also be worse, a greater evil. Fair (/caXop),
says Socrates, means either more pleasurable or more beneficial,
or both. Polus is pleased by this apparent reduction of the kclKop
to the pleasurable and what he regards as its synonym, the
good. But, argues Socrates, if injustice is more shameful and
ugly than justice, it must by the same token be either more
painful or more harmful or both. It is not more painful. It must
therefore be much more harmful or evil, and no man can there¬
fore prefer it to justice. Again, since striking hard implies hard
struck, and in general the qualifications of the active and the
passive must be the same, if to punish is good and honorable, it
is good and honorable to be punished. The dogmas of the Socrat-
ic and Stoic ethics immediately follow. Injustice, the disease of
the soul, is a greater evil than sickness, the evil of the body, or
poverty, which is evil in respect of external goods, and, reveling
in the paradox, Socrates concludes that the true use of rhetoric,
if jt_has any use, would be to get your friends punished and
procure impunity for your enemies to continue a life of sin.

At this point what may be called the third act begins with
Callicles’ question to Chaerephon, Is Socrates in earnest?
The chief features of Plato’s art exemplified in the remainder
of the Gorgias are (i) “modulation,” that is, the apt variation of
mood and theme that makes the long stretches of dialectic toler¬
able and redeems the whole from monotony; (2) the dramatic
representation of Socrates as always able to defeat, if need be by
their own devices, the spokesmen of sophistry and immoralism;
(3) the sustained power that happily surprises after a seeming
climax by achieving a climax higher still. The impression left
upon the mind of the reader by the brilliant speech which Pla¬
to’s open-mindedness puts in the mouth of Callicles is that
though it may be in a sense answerable, it is in its eloquence and

GORGIAS

141

energy unsurpassable. Socrates at first does not attempt to sur¬
pass it. Like the Socrates who has to follow the pyrotechnics of
Agathon in the Symposium , he begins with gentle irony and
some elementary distinctions, advances through a victorious if
sometimes quibbling dialectic to conclusions which he finally
confirms by a moral eloquence which soars to heights that leave
far below the adversary who seemed unsurpassable.

The same feature may be discovered in the Republic , though
it is less obvious there, for the immoralist eloquence with which
Glaucon and Adeimantus recapitulate the thesis of Thrasy-
machus is separated by seven books from the final climax of
moral and spiritual eloquence that outsoars it, and this again is
divided into two flights, one at the end of the ninth book and
the other after a modulation into argument that relieves the
emotional strain, at the end of the tenth book.

There could be no better preparation for the appreciation of
the third act of the Gorgias than a discussion in the smoking com¬
partment of an American Pullman car on the first principles of
ethics and politics with a Russian Jew immoralist who main¬
tained that there is no morality in the world of Jack London,
Darwinian nature, the survival of the strongest, international
relations, American politics, and competitive business, and that
the fundamental fallacy and hypocrisy of puritanic America is
its lip-service to the Emersonian “sovereignty of ethics.” What
can be said, if not to convince, at least to baffle and silence, such
a disputant? That is the problem of the Platonic Socrates as he
turns to confront Callicles. Of Callicles himself we know only
what Plato tells us. He is Plato’s dramatic embodiment of all the
immoralist tendencies of an age of enlightenment and emancipa¬
tion from old conventions and inhibitions. He may or may not
be also a real person. He is sometimes said to be a pupil of the
Sophists, but this is true only in the sense in which it might be
said that Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Russell, Mr. Dreiser, are pu¬
pils of Darwin, Spencer, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, or that
Mr. Aldous Huxley is a pupil of Huxley. Gorgias, Protagoras,
Prodicus, and even Hippias are never represented as talking in
the style of Callicles, and Callicles himself is as contemptuous
of the Sophists as is Anytus in the Meno. Pie merely draws the
last consequences of the doctrines of naturalism, relativism.

Symp. 198-99
487 A

Rep. 357-67

520 A
Meno 92

142

WHAT PLATO SAID

461 c
482 D

487 B

481 C

481 DE

482 AB

482 BC

482 C

482 DE

483 A

483 AB

Rep. 348 E
483 C ff.

Laws 714 C,
7i5 A

subjectivism, individualism, that are in the air. He goes the
whole length of the latent immoralism whose openly avowed
consequences abashed Gorgias and Polus. He thus, like Thrasy-
machus in the Re-public , presents the ultimate problem of ethical
philosophy in the form in which the direct Greek intelligence of
Plato prefers to face it. What sanction remains after the “labe-
factation” of all the old religions and moralities by the new
philosophies?

If, Callicles begins, Socrates is right, we are living in a topsy¬
turvy world, and the true world would be the world of Herbert
Spencer’s “altruistic competition” and Mr. Archibald Mar¬
shall’s Upsidonia. Socrates ironically replies that without com¬
munity of experience all mutual understanding would be im¬
possible. That community exists. Callicles is in love with the
Athenian demos and Demos the son of Pyrilampes. Socrates is
in love with Alcibiades and philosophy. Neither is able to con¬
tradict the objects of his love. But Socrates’ darling, philoso¬
phy, less capricious than Alcibiades, always says the same
things — the things which Callicles has just heard her say. Let
Callicles refute them if he can. Otherwise he will be at variance
with himself — a disharmony far worse than an untuned lyre.
Socrates is a mob orator, talking to the gallery, rejoins Callicles.
He has abashed Gorgias and Polus by his favorite trick of shift¬
ing the argument back and forth from the right of nature to the
right of convention and law. Injustice is more shameful only by
convention and conventional law. Morality and equality are
the refuge of the weak. Nature bids the strong man take his
advantage and overreach the many. And by nature and the
law of nature the domination of the stronger is not only the
better but the nobler thing.

For this reason, while by convention it is regarded as unjust
and shameful to try to overreach other men, and men call this
doing wrong, Nature herself, I take it, declares the truth that
it is right and just that the better man should have more than
the inferior, and the stronger than the weaker. The evidences
of this truth are many both in the conduct of other animals and
among men in the dealings of entire states and tribes. We see
that this is the only rule and test of justice, that the stronger
should rule the weaker and have the advantage of him. If it

GORGIAS

143

were not so, tell me on what principle of justice did Xerxes
march against Greece or his father against the Scythians or
there is no end of examples. But, I tell you, men do these
things in accordance with the nature of justice. Yes, by heaven, 483 e
and in accordance with law, the law of Nature, though perhaps
not by this law of slave morality that we lay down, molding the
best and strongest among us; catching and taming them while
young like lions, chanting our spells to them and bewitching
them, we enslave them and tell them that they ought to accept Rep. 563
equality and that this is the honorable and the just. But if ever, 484A
I take it, a man arises of sufficient natural force, he shakes off
these shackles; he breaks through and escapes these bonds; he
tramples under foot our scraps of paper and Sunday-school
hymns and all our laws and conventions that contradict Nature,
and, rising up in the revolt of youth, stands forth our master, he
who was our slave, and then the true justice of nature flashes
upon our sight. The poet Pindar himself confirms this by his 484 b
praise of the violence of Hercules, that made might right. The
philosophy that is the object of Socrates’ devotion blinds his
eyes to this plain truth. Philosophy is a suitable and becoming 484 c
pursuit for ingenuous youth. But, pursued too long, it is the 484 d
ruination of a man and keeps him ignorant of the realities of
life and politics and of the feelings, desires, and characters of 484 de
men. The philosopher cuts as sorry a figure in political life as Theaet. 173-7.1
the practical man does in a philosophic discussion. Each, in J^cS7 1
Euripides’ phrase: “Devotes his days to what displays him 484 e
best.” Philosophy becomes a free-born youth as lisping a free- 48s b
born child. But it ill becomes a man to shun what Homer calls 4ssd
the man-ennobling agora and spend his days whispering in a
corner with a few boys. I am your friend, Socrates, and am
moved to admonish you in words like those which Zethos the
spokesman of the practical life in Euripides addresses to his 485 e
brother Amphion the artist, the musician, the theorist. “You re
careless of what most should be your care,” and you “Set a 486a
boy’s mask on your gifts of nature.” “No word of yours has
weight in courts of law,” to you “ The plausible and persuasive
are unknown.” “You cannot give strong counsel for a friend.”

Is not such resourcelessness disgraceful? If the sorriest of ac- 486 ab
cusers haled you into court you would be dazed and helpless and onCrito45A

144

WHAT PLATO SAID

Apol. 36 B

486 C

Hipp. Maj. 304
A 5

486 D
On Sisyphus

387 DE

487 AB

Meno 90 B

487 C

Crat. 399 A s
488 A
On Laws 860 D

On Laches 188
CD

Laws 689 A

488 CD
4SS C-489 B
Thcact. 171 A
489 C

Rep. 338 D
(Loeb)
489 D

490 B ff.

peak like John-o’-dreams unpregnant of your cause. And if your
adversary chose to assess the death penalty you would be put
to death. What can be the wisdom of an art of life that
“Worsens thus the better gifts of nature,” and makes a man
incapable of defending or saving himself or his friends, and
reduces him to the condition of a veritable outlaw whom —
pardon the rudeness — anyone can box on the ears with im¬
punity. Nay, be advised by me. “Practice the nobler music of
affairs.” Leave to others these subtleties and refinements —
piffle, shall I call them or moonshine — that “Leave a man to
roam unfurnished halls.” Cease to emulate these splitters of
profitless hairs and pattern yourself rather on men of substance
and repute who have everything handsome about them.

Socrates with ever deepening irony replies that he has surely
found in Callicles the true touchstone of his soul, a counselor
whom he can trust. For Callicles combines in himself qualities
rarely found together. He is wise like Gorgias and Polus, but
unlike them he is frank and cannot be intimidated into self-con¬
tradiction. He is well educated, as many Athenians would say.
And he is friendly, for his advice to Socrates is the very senti¬
ment which Socrates heard him express in conference with a
group of his own intimates. They were debating how far it was
prudent to carry the pursuit of wisdom. And the opinion pre¬
vailed that it was best to pull up in time lest it carry you too far
and you become too wise for your own good. If Socrates errs, he
errs unwillingly. And if he can be brought to assent to Callicles’
view of the good life (it is the greatest of all questions), his prac¬
tice shall conform to his principles or Callicles may deem him a
worthless weakling. Callicles’ Pindaric doctrine of natural jus¬
tice, then, is that the better ought to rule the inferior. By “bet¬
ter” Callicles means stronger. But the many are stronger than
the one, and the many do not believe this doctrine. By Calli¬
cles’ own principles, then, the law of the many is the law of the
stronger and so the law of Nature. Callicles is outraged by the
fallacy, if it is one, and Socrates as usual explains that his only
object in putting the worst interpretation on a formula is to get
it defined. “Superior” is as ambiguous in Callicles’ philosophy
as “superman” in Nietzsche’s. A slight interlude of altercation
brings this out. Is the superior to eat more food or wear bigger

GORGIAS

H5

shoes? asks Socrates, purposely misunderstanding as in the first
book of the Republic . “You always say the same things,” sneers
Callicles. “Yes, and about the same,” is the retort.

Callicles thereupon declares that by “superior” he means the
politically intelligent and enterprising who are fit to rule. Will
they rule themselves too? asks Socrates, thereby directly raising
the ethical issue. Callicles does not understand, or affects not
to understand; and Socrates explains that he means nothing
profound but just ordinary self-control and morality. Callicles’
contemptuous reply is an explicit fresh statement of immoral-
ism. Morality is merely rationalized weakness, conventional
window-dressing, piffle, and moonshine. The strong man gives
free rein to his appetites and has the power to provide their sat¬
isfaction. The multitude condemn him and praise justice to veil
their lack of manly spirit. On the theory that those who need
nothing are the happy, stones and corpses would be happiest of
all. Here as elsewhere, before directly arguing the issue Socrates
makes a half-serious appeal to mysticism, symbol, intuition, and
ancient authority. The symbolism is said to be Py thagoreanism
learned in Italy. But that makes no difference.

It may be that, as Euripides put it, “Who knows if life be
death and death be life?” The body is the tomb of the soul, the
carcass the casket. And after other untranslatable puns or “ety¬
mologies,” the part of the soul that feels appetite and desire is
compared to the legendary sieve of the Danaids. Or to take
another image from the same school, the sober life fills its vessels
with wine, honey, and milk, and the man goes about his busi¬
ness. The life of insatiate appetite is constrained to spend its
days in perpetually refilling leaky jars. Callicles is unmoved by
these images, for happiness, he says, that is pleasure, consists
precisely in the perpetual influx and efflux — the life of a cormo¬
rant, in short, is Socrates' caustic comment. These images,
which are illustrations of an argument, not the argument it is to
be noted, are a distinct anticipation of the fundamental ethical
doctrine of the negativity of sensual pleasures, as explicitly set
forth in the Philebus and the ninth book of the Republic . Plato
does not develop it here. Socrates forces the issue by asking if
pleasure includes every kind of sensuous satisfaction even to the
easing of an itch in any part of the body. And when Callicles re-

490 E

On 482 AB

491 AB

491 B 2, C 7
Prot. 349 E

491 D

491 E

492 A 5
483 B 5
492 C

492 A

Meno 77 B ff.
492 A 8
Rep. 366 D 2

492 E

Meno 81 B
On Phaedo 62 B

Supra, p. 8

Frag. 639, 830
At. Frogs 1477

492 E

493 A
493 BC

493 D

493 E-494 A

494 B
Tim. 43 A

44 ft-
S83 B ff.

494 C

494 E

146

WHAT PLATO SAID

494E-495A bukes him for giving the conversation that turn, he replies that
the fault is Callicles’, who refuses to make any distinction be¬
tween pleasures. Callicles maintains his ground, if only to save
495 cd his consistency, and Socrates, after a little word-play of alterca¬
tion, proceeds to refute him with what most modern readers re-
49s Efr. gard as wearisome or fallacious dialectical subtlety. A thing
cannot at the same time be or cease to be both good and evil.
But we do get and get rid of pleasure and pain at the same time
496 e when the pain of thirst is relieved by the pleasure of drinking.

498 Again if we take into consideration the pleasure which the cow¬
ard and the base feel when the enemy retire, the base feel about
as much pleasure and pain as the good, but they are surely not
equally good, though if pleasure is the good, good is equally
present with them. It is not necessary to inquire now whether
this and Socrates’ other illustrations (497-98) are sound logic
49V b or psychology, for Callicles, after complaining of the sophistry
and consenting to continue only at Gorgias’ urgency, abandons
49SE his extreme position, and, when Socrates sums up the argument,
499B says that he was jesting and that of course he recognizes that
some pleasures are good and some bad. With the aid of this ad¬
mission Socrates, with some repetition of his arguments with

499 e Gorgias and Polus, reinstates his distinction between arts that

500 b aim at the good and empiric practices that strive only to please.

And thus he prepares the way for that embittered indictment of
Athenian democracy and the arts that minister to it which ex¬
presses the mood in which Plato wrote the Gorgias.
supra, p. 24 There is no lack of explanations of this mood — the judicial
murder of Socrates, the cold fit of the fourth century following
the hot fit of the fifth, the reaction, that is, of most sober-minded
conservative fourth-century writers against imperialism and the
excesses of democracy, and perhaps chief of all the conflict be¬
tween Plato’s ideals and the degenerate reality which finds a
somewhat different and less passionate expression in the Re¬
public and the Laws. This mood is explicable and justifiable,
and the expression of it is magnificent. But it is quite idle to
contrast the language of the Gorgias with other incidental milder
269 e or more carefully qualified utterances in the Meno or Phaedrus
238 cd or Menexenus as evidence of Plato’s self-contradiction or in
support of conjectures as to the precise date of the Gorgias or

GORGIAS

T47

the circumstances in Plato’s life that caused him to give vent
to his feelings and let himself go for once. It is enough to note
that in this glorious composition he unburdens his very soul
with all the divine intensity of Dante. All the arts that minister
to the pleasure of the moment, regardless of good, in whatever
fine phrases disguised, are, as said before, forms of flattery.
There is a flattery of the body as by cookery, and a flattery of
the mind. And there is flattery of the single soul and of the
crowd. The arts on which Athens prides herself, the music of
the flute, the cither, the soloist who sings to the lyre, yes, and
gorgeous and solemn tragedy herself, are merely flatterers of the
collective soul and taste of democratic Athens. They give the
public what it (or its lower self) likes, not what it needs. Tragic
poetry stripped of music, metre, and rhythm is only discourse,
a form of rhetoric addressed to the mob in the theatre, as politi¬
cal rhetoric is addressed to the mob of the Assembly. Does po¬
litical rhetoric aim to please or to benefit? Callicles tries to
stem the tide with a distinction that some orators are sincerely
concerned for the good of the people and some are not. But
Socrates sweeps on — then there are two kinds, and the art of the
one kind is flattery. Callicles when challenged to name exam¬
ples of the better kind can think of no contemporary and falls
back on the names of Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Peri¬
cles. Our estimate of them, Socrates continues, depends on our
acceptance of Callicles’ ideal of life and statesmanship. The
good craftsman in any art does not work or speak at random,
but with the definite purpose of realizing a type or ideal which
he contemplates. The finished product must be a harmonious
structure of right arrangement and beautiful order. Such an
order in the body is health, and in the soul it is the law and the
submission to law that we call soberness and righteousness. The
true and scientific rhetor will make this his aim and direct all
that he says and does to this end. For if life is worthless with an
unhealthy body, how much more so with a diseased soul. There¬
fore it is only the healthy body or soul that may safely indulge
its appetites. The diseased soul is better for the restraint upon
its desires that is chastisement.

The word “chastisement” irritates Callicles, who refuses
to take further part in the discussion. And after some banter

499- 500

500- 501

501 D

501 E

502 B

502 BC
Laws 659 AB
Isoc. Antid. 133
502 C
Rep. 601 B

Laws 817 C 4
502 D

502 E

503 A

503 BC
503 C

503 DE
506 D 6

504 A
504 BCD

504 D

505 AB
512 A

On Rep. 445 AB

Symp. 186 B-D
505 B

505 c

478 A, 477 A
507 DE, Erastae
137 C, Soph.
229 A

On Laches 197 E

148

. WHAT PLATO SAID

505 D
506 CDE

507 AB
507 C

On Charm. 173 D
507 D

507 E

493 B ff.

508 A

508 A 8

508 BC

508 C ff.
486 BC

508 E

509 A
509 B
509 A

On Charm. 165 B
Apol. 28 B 4

509 C

509 C ff.
469 C

522 D

510 A
510 AB

510 B ff.
On Lysis 214 B

510 BC

and word-fence Socrates, who is unwilling to leave “the myth
without a head,” resumes and carries on the argument, ask¬
ing and answering his own questions. He emphasizes the
points of the preceding argument, restates the doctrine of the
unity of the virtues, repeats his favorite “fallacy” that the vir¬
tuous man will do well and so “fare well,” and reaffirms the con¬
clusion that the happiest man is he who does not need chastise¬
ment, but the second in happiness is he who needing it receives
it, and then modulates into one of the climaxes of Plato's moral
eloquence. The life of unbridled appetite is the life of a brigand.
It is the endless and interminable pursuit of an illusory satisfac¬
tion which has already been compared to the sieve of the
Danaids, and which the Phaedo (84 A) compares to the web of
Penelope. Such a one is dear to neither god nor man, for he is
incapable of communion and harmony, and it is union, friend¬
ship, order, harmony, the sages tell us, that hold together the
heavens and the earth and gods and men. This has escaped
Callicles for all his wisdom. He is unaware of the power of geo¬
metrical equality among gods and men, and thinks that the
true aim of life is to grasp at everything and overreach others,
for he is heedless of geometry. And then, checking his eloquence
in mid-flight, Socrates comes down to earth with the challenge
to refute the argument or accept its conclusions — all the para¬
doxes, in short, which Polus' shamefacedness constrained him
to accept. Callicles has challenged Socrates to abandon a way
of life that leaves him, as it were, an outlaw, helpless in the
hands of anyone who chooses to strike him or treat him with
contumely. But Socrates retorts that it has been proved by a
logic of iron and adamant that it is better to suffer such wrong
than to inflict it. And if this is so — Socrates is only a seeker —
but if this is so, and Callicles cannot refute it, the most shameful
helplessness is that which leaves a man impotent to save him¬
self from doing wrong. Is this so or not, friend Callicles? Let us
compare the two evils and the ways of defense against either.
In order not to suffer wrong we must either rule the state our¬
selves or stand in with the gang that does. Callicles abandons
his sullen silence to approve this sound sentiment of practical
politics. But, continues Socrates, the wise tell us that like is
friend of like. In order to be the friend of the rulers you must

GORGIAS

149

assimilate yourself to them and be such as they. The tyrant
will despise his inferiors and fear his betters. No feigning will
suffice. The ruler’s friend must think, feel, praise, and blame as
he does, and fawn upon his power. That is the moral of practical
politics for every keen young man who desires to succeed in life.
In that way he will have escaped suffering wrong, but at the
price of the greatest of all evils, the corruption of his own soul
by his imitation of evil men. And don’t you know, retorts Calli-
cles, that the imitator may put to death the man who disdains
to imitate? Socrates knows it if he is not deaf, for it is dinned
into his ears on every hand. But he says it will be a bad man
killing a good man. And is not that precisely the intolerable
thing? asks Callicles, perhaps momentarily falling out of his role
as the uncompromising immoralist. Not so, replies Socrates, in
the strain of Coleridge’s Good Great Man, or of Jesus’ “Whoso¬
ever will save his life shall lose it.” The principle that safety,
salvation, and survival are the aim of life and the test of excel¬
lence would carry Callicles farther than he wishes to go. On
that principle swimming that saves from drowning would be a
noble art, or, if that is a trivial instance, the art of the navigator
brings a shipload of passengers safe from Egypt to the Peiraeus
for a two-drachma fare at the most, and the navigator does not
plume himself but disembarks and walks about the Peiraeus as
modestly as any ordinary citizen. For he knows that he has
landed his passengers no better men than they were when they
embarked, and he does not know which of them would have
been happier if he had let them drown. And again, if salvation
is the test, the engineer saves whole cities from destruction and
would have plenty to say for himself and his art, yet Callicles
deems him an inferior and would not give his daughter to him.

Ah, my friend, have a care lest true nobility and the good
are something else than keeping safe and surviving! Perhaps
we may rather say that the true man must neither love nor
hate his life but how long or short permit to heaven, and try to
live well the portion that falls to his lot, the lot that the women
say none can escape. We are not asking which is the safe but
which is the good life— is it the life of power bought at the terri¬
ble price of likening one’s self to the souls of the possessors of
power ? For no pretense will serve. To please Demos, the demos

On 511 A
Rep. 567 BC
510 C

513 ab

510 D

Rep. 365 AB
(Loeb)

511 A

511 B

On Eutliyd.

279 B

On Syrap. 179 D
Parmen. 135 BC

5ii Bff.

511 C

511 D

511 DE

512 A

On Charm. 164
AB

512 B

512 C

512 C 6

512 DE
Phaedo 69 A f.
Apol. 38-3?
Isoc. Archid. 91

512 E

513 ab

WHAT PLATO SAID

5*3 A

513 c
On Meno 86 B

513 c

Ale. I. 132 A
513 DE

5i3 E

503 E

5U Bff.

Laches 186 B
515 A
Laches 186 AB
514 E 7, 515
B 4

515 BC

515 E

516 A
516 DE

516 AB

517 A
517 AB

517 C

On Charm. 174 B
11

518 A
518 B

150

of Athens or Demos the son of Pyrilampes, you must be such as
they are in your very inmost soul, and think and say the things
it pleases them to hear. You will then have power. So Thes¬
salian witches are said to have power to draw down the moon,
but at what a price! Callicles is for the moment overawed by
the intensity of Socrates' feeling, but like the majority of man¬
kind he is not convinced. The love of Demos in his soul resists
Socrates' appeal, and it would require many repetitions of the
argument to convert and convince him. Socrates engages him
in discussion again. The true object of government, then, is the
improvement of the souls of the citizens. The good counselor
in any business must prove his competence by reference to his
teachers or by giving specimens of his workmanship. What pri¬
vate citizen has Callicles made better before he sets up as a
public physician of the soul? You are invidious, Socrates, is the
reply. But Socrates insists that his only object is to define and
choose between the two ideals. Did the older statesmen whom
Callicles commends make the citizens better? Is not Pericles
said to have made the Athenians chatterboxes and grafters by
habituating them to live on doles from the treasury? Yes, said
by Spartanomaniacs, Socrates. Well, rejoins Socrates, we our¬
selves know that after Pericles had moralized the Athenians
they impeached him for embezzlement. They ostracized Cimon
that they might not hear his voice for ten years, and but for the
prytanis would have hurled Miltiades of Marathon into the exe¬
cutioner's pit. We do not call a man a good caretaker of horses
and cattle if they are gentle when he takes them over, and after
he has had the care of them they kick and butt and bite. Man
is an animal and Pericles was a caretaker of men. These elder
statesmen, it would seem, did not use successfully either the
flattering rhetoric or the true. But no statesman of today can
match the deeds of the men I have mentioned, objects Callicles.
You ignore the issue, replies Socrates, and our discussion keeps
revolving upon itself and returning to its starting-point. When,
supposing that you recognize my distinction between the two¬
fold service of mind and body for pleasure and for good, I ask
you to name the good political servitors of Athens, your reply
is as if for good physicians and servitors of the body you named
Thearion the pastry cook and Mithaikos, author of the Sicilian

GORGIAS

151

cookbook, and Sarambos who kept a delicatessen shop. I have
no fault to find with the elder statesmen, regarded merely as
ministers to the people's desires, but I think that they were bet¬
ter servants than our present politicians and better providers of
what the public desired. But as for altering these desires and
not catering to them and endeavoring to persuade or constrain
the citizens to the course of action that would make them better
men, in this those elder statesmen were no whit better than the
men of today. And this I maintain is the sole function of a true
statesman. But as for ships and walls and docks and shipyards,
revenues, and things of that sort I agree with you that the elder
statesmen were better providers of them than the men of today.
But your praise of them is as if you should praise a cook who
fattened and fed men up and filled them with unwholesome
flesh and then claimed to be a great physician. So people say
that these elder imperialists made our city great. But they are
not aware that its present puffy and festering condition is due
to those very statesmen, for without any regard to sobriety and
righteousness they filled it up with harbors and naval stations
and docks and fortifications and tribute money and other fool¬
ishness. And even as when repletion and plethora bring disease
men blame not the cooks who fattened them, but the attendants
at hand, so the Athenians will hold responsible for the painful
deflations of their imperialistic expansions not Cimon or Peri¬
cles, but the politicians of the hour, Alcibiades, it may be, or
Callicles himself. For the rest, the complaints of the ingratitude
of democracy toward its statesmen are as illogical as the com¬
plaints of the Sophists that they have been wronged by the very
pupils to whom they have “taught virtue." Callicles is quite
willing to abandon the Sophists to Socrates' censure. But he
does not perceive that the case of the statesman is the same.
Yet no statesman can reasonably complain of unjust treatment
at the hands of the people whose training and education he has
himself controlled. Sophist and statesman alike are exposed to
the retort that if they had done their work rightly and bettered,
not flattered, their pupils, they could not be wronged by them.

To which service of the state does Callicles invite Socra¬
tes — that which ministers to the appetites and desires, or that
which resists them for the sake of the good? The ministerial

517 B

518 c ff.

517 B 5

Symp. 186 D 2
Theaet. 187 C

517 C

5i9 A

518 C, E

518 E

5i9 A

519 AB

Thucyd. 7. 14
519 B

On 516 DE

520 A

Mono 91 C £f.

519 c

520 A

520-21
521 A

152

WHAT PLATO SAID

521 E
531 B

521 C

521 C
486 B
521 D

521 DE
521 E
Apol. 17 BC

521 E
464 D

522 B
Meno 80 A
Rep. 515 D 6

524 A 7

522 C

522 D

509 D

Laws 829 A
Apol. 38 D
522 E
On Laws 727 D

523 A

On Phaedo 61 B 4

523 ABC
523 B 6

523 D 4-5

523 B
523 DE

service, Callicles admits. You mean to that which will flatter
their desires. Yes, if you choose to put the v/orst name upon it,
for if you do not serve them in this way — Don't tell me again
that anyone who pleases will kill or plunder me lest I reply
again that he will be a scoundrel and will make an ill use of his
ill-gotten gain. You seem to suppose, Socrates, is Callicles'
warning or threat, that you live apart and are in no danger of
being haled into court by some rascally prosecutor. I must be
senseless indeed, Socrates replies, if I do not suppose that any¬
thing may happen to anybody in this city and especially to me.
Shall I tell you why? I am one of the few, not to say the only
statesman in Athens, who pursues the true science of politics.
The aim of all my words is to do good, not merely to please, and
I am unskilled in the subtleties of the rhetoric of the law courts.
As I was saying to Polus, my trial will be that of a physician
who is accused before a jury of boys of corrupting and destroy¬
ing them with drugs and knives and reducing them to the most
painful straits. So I shall be accused of corrupting youths and
reducing them to embarrassment by my questions. And it will
avail me as little as the physician to plead that I do it for their
good. I do not admit that this helplessness is shameful. As I
have said before, the really disgraceful resourcelessness is the
inability to defend one's self against doing, not suffering, wrong.
But if I shall be condemned to die from lack of the resources of
the rhetoric that flatters, you will see me bearing my death
easily. For death itself no man but a thoughtless coward fears.
The really dreadful thing is unrighteousness, to go down to the
house of death with a soul corrupted and marred by evil deeds.

That is the moral of an ancient tale which Callicles will
deem a fable, but which Socrates will relate as the word of
truth. Under the older dispensation of Cronos and in the be¬
ginning of the reign of Zeus, the last judgment was held on the
day of death when every man was still clothed with the body,
begirt with possessions, and could summon troops of friends to
testify in his behalf. The judges were dazzled by these exter¬
nals, and their own vision was dimmed by the investiture of
their own living bodies. The wardens of Hades and the Islands
of the Blessed complained that the wrong souls came to them re¬
spectively. So Zeus bade Prometheus conceal from men fore-

GORGIAS

H3

knowledge of the day of death, so that no man could tell the
hour when his soul would be required of him. And Zeus ap- 523 e
pointed his sons Minos and Rhadamanthys and Aeacus to judge 524 a
the dead, stripped naked of their bodies and all the appurte- SritE403 b 5
nances of life, scrutinizing soul with very soul. As the corpse of a
whipped slave still bears the welts of the lash, so the souls of the S24 bcd
dead keep the stigmata of the misdeeds that have marred and
scarred and deformed them. When such a soul comes before the 524 e
judge he does not know that it is the soul of a tyrant, a great
king, a potentate. He only knows that it is an evil soul. And so S26b
attaching to it a mark to distinguish the curable from the in- Rep. 6i4c
curable, he sends it away to punishment in Tartarus with scorn
and contumely. But the soul of a philosopher who has minded 526 c
his own business in life and not been a busybody he content- on charm. 161 b
plates with awe and admiration and dismisses to the Islands of Phaedo 114 C
the Blessed. The object of punishment is to benefit. But it is onProt. 324 ab
not possible to benefit incurable sinners. They serve only as ex- 525 c
amples and warnings to others, as Archelaos will if Polus’ tale of 525 d
him be true. Most of the incurables are princes and potentates, 325 de
less happy in this than the poor and the powerless who lack the Euthyd. 281 d 7
opportunity to commit great and irremediable crimes. Curable aic. 1. 134-33
sinners are healed in the end, but only after a long and pain- 52s b
ful sojourn in Tartarus. There is no other cure for sin except
through suffering. Believing this tale, Socrates makes it his one 526 de
aim to keep his soul unspotted from the world and present it Rep. 621 c
clean and pure to his judge. At that bar of judgment it is the 527 a
Callicleses of this world who will peak, like John-o ’-Dreams, un¬
pregnant of their cause and be helpless and resourceless to de- 527 a
fend themselves. And there it is they who may be struck and
contumeliously treated and dragged away to the prison house.

Callicles may deem this an old wives’ tale, and he might well
laugh it to scorn if the three wisest of the Greeks in their long de¬
bate with Socrates had been able to show that any other way of
life profits a man in the end, but that which will make him not Aefc£6sept. 592
seem but be good and will keep him safe on the day of judgment.

In all the war of words and contradictory arguments this faith 327 b
and this truth alone have stood fast and come forth triumphant.

Be not troubled, then, when men speak evil of you. Do thou 327 c
bear with patience the contumely and the blows that are

j54

WHAT PLATO SAID

527 D
Apol. 30 CD
I Pet. 3:13

527 E
On Crito 46 B

thought to bring dishonor. No real harm can come to a good
man who has first exercised himself in the ways of virtue. When
we have so prepared ourselves, we may undertake political ac¬
tion or whatsoever seems good to us. We shall so be better
counselors than now when we contradict ourselves and are never
of one mind about the things that concern our peace most near¬
ly. Let reason be our guide, the reasoning which has now re¬
vealed to us that to live and die in the practice of righteousness
and virtue — this is the true way and the life, not that way of
life to which you invite me, for it is nothing worth, dear Calli-
cles.

Many critics regard the Gorgias , and more particularly the
third “act” of it, as a mere medley of word-catching arguments
and sublime moral eloquence crowned with a myth of immor¬
tality. Such criticism, as we have seen, overlooks the artistic
construction by which the discussion of rhetoric passes into the
opposition of the two contrasted ethical ideals and the conflict
of moralities advances to the climax in which the two predes¬
tined champions confront each other as the two brothers in the
Seven against Thebes . It takes no note of the art by which the
dialectics and the passages of satire and eloquence relieve one
another at suitable intervals. And lastly, having once adopted
this preconception, such critics fail to scrutinize the thought
closely enough to perceive the relative justification in their
place of the alleged fallacies. The tracts of captious dialectic are
dramatically appropriate as illustrations of the superior ingenu¬
ity of Socrates at this game. They are logically justified as
answers to the crudity of the extreme position which Socrates’
opponent is represented as provisionally maintaining. They are
morally redeemed by the fact that Socrates accompanies them
with a perfectly clear if allegorical suggestion of the central
scientific principle of the Platonic ethics, the negativity of the
pleasures of sense, and that in compensation for Callicles’ help¬
lessness in dialectics the most eloquent statement of the im-
moralist’s case in European literature is put into his mouth.

MENO

The Meno is pronounced a little gem by John Stuart Mill and
is thought by many critics, ancient and modern, to be the best
introduction to the study of Plato. One eminent scholar chooses
to fancy that it is the program of the Academy.

Meno, a wealthy young Thessalian and pupil of Gorgias,
abruptly asks Socrates the current question, Can virtue be 70 a
taught? Socrates ironically replies that such wisdom has de¬
parted from Athens to Thessaly where Gorgias has taken up his 70B-71 a
abode. There is a drought of wisdom at Athens and he and the
Athenians do not even know what virtue is. Socrates cannot re- on Laches iqo 3
member what Gorgias used to say about virtue when he was at 71 c
Athens. Will Meno remind him? Or since Gorgias is absent, let 03<^cDM,n'
Meno himself define virtue. Meno thinks that is easy, but
though an educated man, who has studied rhetoric and pre- 286 e'
Socratic philosophy with Gorgias, and who, as later appears, 82 e
knows geometry as a matter of course, he has never reflected on on Gorg. 508 a
logic and dialectic. He gives examples instead of definitions,
and does not apprehend the distinction between virtue and a 73 de
virtue. In place of a definition he offers Socrates a whole swarm 72 a
of virtues, or rather a “topic” for a rhetorical discourse on the Sieaet? 146 d
diverse virtues of men, women, children, free and slave. There 71E-72A
is plenty to say about virtue, he opines. The lesson in the ele¬
mentary logic of the definition which Socrates imparts to him
follows the lines of similar discussions in other minor dialogues.

Socrates employs a terminology equally applicable to mere logic
and to the Platonic theory of ideas. He wishes to know the es- onEuthyPh.6 d
sence of the thing (owna), that which it is as or qua such, the 72 b
form owing to which it is what it is everywhere, and on which
we fix our eyes in order to understand it, the common quality 72 c
that runs through all virtues or is predicated of all, and that ^ A°b‘ 13 B
makes them virtues, and in respect of which they will not differ, 73 d i
that by which, the identical way by which, they are what they He
are, the identical thing on or in them all everywhere. 75 a

There are many virtues, says Meno, bravery, wisdom, mag- 74 a

155

WHAT PLATO SAID

74 D

On Laches 192
AB

75 B
75 CD

76 A

76 D
Rep. 545 E 1
76 E

77 B

77 B-78 B

78 DE

78 E

79 A

On Prot. 329 D
79 B

79 C

80 A

80 CD

Prot. 348 C
On Charm. 165 B

156

nificence, and others. So, rejoins Socrates, there are many dif¬
fering or even opposite figures, but figure as such can be de¬
fined as the only thing that always accompanies color. If a con¬
tentious and eristic interlocutor objected that he didn’t under¬
stand color, I should reply: “I have spoken. Refute me if you
can.” But to a friend like Meno I will answer more dialectically
in terms which he admits that he knows. Figure is the limit of
solid. And what is color? demands the irrepressible, bird-
witted Meno. Socrates entertains him with a pseudo-scientific
definition in terms of the philosophy of Empedocles, the teacher
of Gorgias. Hear and perpend, as Pindar hath it: Color is an
emanation from form commensurate with, and perceptible to,
vision. Meno prefers this “tragic” definition, but if he could
remain at Athens for the mysteries, he would perceive that the
definition of form is better.

At last, having some notion of the point, Meno offers in the
words of an unknown poet the characteristic Greek definition
that virtue is to take pleasure in fair things and have power (to
procure them). Socrates thereupon first puzzles him with the
Socratic principle that all men delight in fair or fine, that is, in
good things, and no one willingly chooses evil, and then, taking
good in Meno’s sense of worldly goods, and with ironical harp¬
ing on the word “procure,” constrains him to interpret power
as meaning power to procure good things justly and with jus¬
tice. But justice is a part of virtue, and the definition reduces
to the tautology that virtue is power to act with a part of virtue.
To understand that we must first know what virtue is. Meno is
unable to produce a satisfactory definition of virtue, and, grow¬
ing weary of this dialectic, he complains that Socrates resembles
the torpedo fish that numbs and paralyzes all that it touches.
He has often spoken eloquently of virtue and now can say
nothing. Socrates suspects Meno of likening him in order that
he may liken Meno in turn. For the likenesses of the fair are
fair. Socrates will not fall into the trap. If the torpedo fish is
itself numb and paralyzed, he admits the likeness. For he him¬
self is at a loss when he baffles others. He does not know what
virtue is, and Meno bears a certain resemblance to one who does
not know. Socrates is willing to join him in the search. But how
will they recognize virtue when they find it, objects Meno, if

MENO

J57

they don’t know what it is? To this eristic and lazy argument,
which has exercised commentators and philosophers for more
than two thousand years, Socrates replies with a sudden modu¬
lation into Plato’s lofty style. He has heard from men and
women wise in things divine and competent to render an ac¬
count, and from poets like Pindar that the soul is immortal, that
it has seen all things in its past voyagings through strange seas of
experience and that all that we learn here is reminiscence, a re¬
covery of that lapsed knowledge. And since all nature is akin,
the recollection of one thing only, if we are brave and industrious
and do not yield to this eristic argument, may enable us to re¬
cover all. Socrates proceeds to prove this by extracting from
one of Meno’s attendant slaves, who has never studied geome¬
try, a demonstration of the proposition about the square of the
hypotenuse. Incidentally, he points out the moral that the
slave supposed that he knew what length of line must be the
base of a double square, and that the first condition of his learn¬
ing better was the puzzlement and numbing that cured him of
this false conceit of knowledge. These opinions have been stirred
in him as in a dream, and repeated questionings will convert
them into knowledge. Meno is, he knows not how, half con¬
vinced, but the only thing that Socrates after all is prepared to
affirm positively is the practical answer to Meno’s difficulty.
We shall certainly be better men, more valiant and less idle in
the pursuit of truth, if we believe that it is somehow possible to
learn what we do not know, than if in the belief that it is im¬
possible we supinely abandon the search.

Socrates then proposes to return to the common quest for the
definition of virtue as the condition precedent of any further
knowledge about it. But the spoiled Meno, who wishes to rule
Socrates but does not try to rule himself, in order that he may
be a free man, insists on his original question, Can it be taught?
They compromise on a method of hypothesis. If virtue is knowl¬
edge or science, it can be taught — or “recollected” — the term is
indifferent — if not, not. The argument that it is knowledge pro¬
ceeds on familiar lines. A virtue must be assumed to be good.
And if nothing can be really good apart from the knowledge
that makes a right use of it, virtue must be knowledge. All the
man depends on the soul and all the soul depends on knowledge.

80 D

81 A

On Phaedo 76 B

Lysis 214 B
81 DE

82 B-86

84 BC

On Lysis 218 AB
Polit. 277 D

85 C

Cf. 98 A

86 B s

86 BC

On Charm. 158 D
86 C

On Laches 190 B
76 B 8

On Laches 179 D
86 D 6

On Gorg. 491 D
Rep. 562 E 9

86 E

87 BC

87 D

On Charm. 159 D

88 C

On Euthyd. 280

88 E

WHAT PLATO SAID

158

89b If goodness came by nature, we would diagnose good children
and lock them up on the Acropolis more securely than our gold,
lest aught corrupt them. But since it does not come by nature,
it must come by teaching. This conclusion is blocked by the
Prot. 324 I? ff. difficulty of the Protagoras , Who are the teachers? Socrates ap¬
peals to Anytus, one of his accusers in the Apology , whose un-
89 e motivated entrance on the scene has troubled some critics of
Plato s dramatic art. Anytus is described with elaborate irony
as the model of all that the Athenian people expect in an edu-

90 ab cated man and a good citizen. We know the teachers of cobbling

and medicine, Socrates argues; who are the teachers of virtue?
90D By analogy it should be those who claim to be professionals in

91 ab that function, the Sophists. Heavens, no! protests Anytus.
91 c They are the corrupters of youth. As Anytus admits that he has
2 c 6 n?v.er assoc^ated with any Sophist, Socrates thinks he must be a

On Laclie^95 diviner to be so certain what they are. But if they are not the
92‘ E teachers of virtue, who are? Why look for special teachers,
93 a Anytus continues. All good citizens teach virtue and any good
citizen is a sufficient teacher. Has not Athens had many good
citizens? She has and still more has had, replies Socrates, but
have they been able to teach their own virtue? That is the
point.

93-94 Without going over this familiar ground again, we need only
observe that Plato here as elsewhere feels a certain sympathy
for the Sophists and rhetoricians when they are assailed by the
ordinary Athenian politician or Philistine who is contemptuous
E of all intellectual pursuits. Anytus thinks Socrates is lightly
Burnet on $>01. speaking evil of great men and threatens him with the conse-
Gorg. 521 c quences in the style of Callicles in the Gorgias. And Socrates
9s a continues the conversation with Meno, observing first that
when Anytus learns the real meaning of speaking ill, he will no
95 b longer be angry. Meno agrees that the parents themselves
9s c doubt whether virtue can be taught. And as for the Sophists, he
approves of Gorgias who makes no such claim, but only pro¬
fesses to teach men to speak. The poets too — Theognis, for ex-
95 d ample — contradict themselves on the question, as Socrates
96A proves by quotations. Does Meno know of any other subject on
96 b which such confusion reigns? He does not.

The discussion has issued in two contradictory propositions:

MENO

i59

(1) that virtue is knowledge and can be taught, and (2) that
there are no teachers and therefore it cannot be taught. It might
have concluded on this puzzle in the manner of the minor dia>-
logues. But the thought occurs to Socrates that for some practi¬
cal purposes right opinion may take the place of knowledge. A
man who had never been to Larissa but had a correct opinion 97 a
about the way thither would be as safe a guide as one who had
made the journey and knew. The difference is that right opin¬
ions are unstable and like the fabled statues of Daedalus will not 97 de
stay on their bases unless they are bound — bound by causal rea- Tim. 4s b 4
soning which converts them into knowledge. This causal reason- 98 a
ing is the anamnesis of which we were speaking. Such is Socrates’
conjecture. But that there is some real difference between right ??nA86B
opinion and knowledge is, he thinks, not conjecture but one of
the few things that he knows. While right opinion endures, it 98 b
is for practical purposes as good a guide as knowledge; and since
we have agreed that virtue cannot be taught and therefore is not
knowledge, the virtue of the statesmen of Athens who cannot
teach their sons must be due to right opinion and to grace di¬
vine, like the inspiration of prophets and soothsayers and poets. 99 e
But if there were a statesman who could teach his own virtue 100 a
and train up his successors, he would be, as Homer says of
Teiresias, the only living, breathing reality amid the shades. od. x. 495
The object of these analyses is not primarily the systematic
interpretation of Plato’s philosophy, which is reserved for more
technical studies elsewhere. But it will be an economy to warn
the reader here against the naive fancy that the Meno marks the
precise point in Plato’s development at which the notion of
right opinion first occurred to him and brought about a revolu¬
tion in his thought. Plato’s explicit doctrine, as plainly stated in
the Re-public , is that in a casual and careless democracy “virtue” 493 a 1-2
is not systematically and philosophically taught, but does come
to some by fortunate temperament and grace divine. In a re¬
formed state the virtue of the multitude, based on right opinion,
will be effectively taught and inculcated and drilled into them,
and the virtue of the philosophic governors will be knowledge
and genuine insight. They will fulfil the prophecy of the Meno,
and be able to educate their successors.

EUTHYDEMUS

The Euthydemus is a dialogue narrated by Socrates, intro-

290 e duced, concluded, and once interrupted by a direct dramatic
conversation between Socrates and Crito. It is at once an Aris-
tophanic farce, a satire on the sophistries of the age before logic,
a treatise on logical fallacies, and a notable example of the art of
modulation and variety in unity in Platonic construction. Like
Theaet. 144 c the Charmides and Lysis , it is a gymnasium scene. Socrates,

272 e about to leave the Lyceum, is checked by his divine monitor and
observes two eminent visiting Sophists, Euthydemus and Di-
onysodorus, giving to a circle of admirers an exhibition of their
proficiency in the art of disputation — their ability to overthrow

272 ab with knockdown arguments anything that may be said, whether

273 b fi. true or false. Socrates and his friends draw nigh and discussion

is engaged between the two groups and their leaders. The tricks,
the quips, the evasions of the precious pair, marked as two
of a kind by the persistent and ingenious use of the Greek
dual, include nearly every fallacy in Aristotle’s book of fallacies
and in the textbooks of logic today, from “Have you left off
beating your mother?” to “Take a walk on an empty stomach —
whose empty stomach?” The fun consists partly in the outra¬
geous character of the Sophists’ logic, partly in the ironical hu¬
mility with which Socrates, while avowing his helpless inferi¬
ority, contrives to suggest the conclusive answer to every falla¬
ls D-290 d cy. The monotony of the jest is relieved by the earnest of two
on Lysis 207 d little specimen discourses of Socrates with one of the lads,
which he offers as samples of his way of conversing with youth.

The two Sophists, who used to teach “fighting in arms,” mili¬
tary science, and self-defense in the courtroom, claim that they
have added to their other accomplishments the ability to teach
aPoi?23ob “virtue” most expeditiously and effectively. This is what they
xen. Mem. 3. 1. 1 profess. The rest is now a side issue, an avocation, not a voca-

273 e tion. Socrates greets them as very gods. He will be satisfied if

274 d today they exhibit their skill in one little preliminary matter.

27s a Are they masters of the protreptic art? Can they exhort to the

l6o

EUTHYDEMUS 161

study of philosophy and pursuit of virtue one who is uninter¬
ested or who does not believe that virtue can be taught? They
of course do not apprehend his point, but are prepared to affirm
that they can do anything. They begin at once on Socrates’
young friend, Cleinias, who like Charmides has had some prac¬
tice in answering questions, by asking him whether those who
learn are the wise or the ignorant. The Greek words are even
more ambiguous than the English, and one of the pair whispers
to Socrates with a broad grin that, whatever the answer, the boy
will be confuted. Before Socrates has time to warn him to be on
his guard, the blushing and embarrassed youth replies that it is
the wise (the clever, the smart) who learn. That is refuted by
the argument that the pupils do not know what they go to the
teacher to learn and therefore are unwise. But again after a
burst of applause the other Sophist elicits the answer that it was
the wise or clever students who learned what they were taught,
and therefore those who learn are the wise. This provokes a
still more vociferous outburst of applause and laughter, and
Euthydemus, like an expert dancer making a double turn, goes
on to ask whether learners learn what they know or what they
don’t know. All our questions, Dionysodorus whispers to Soc¬
rates, are of this inevitable quality.

They continue to play with the ambiguities of wise, ignorant,
learning, and understanding, to the utter confusion of the boy,
till Socrates, seeing that he is getting into deep water, intei rupts
and draws the moral with which he ironically credits the Soph¬
ists: They are merely initiating the lad in the elements of edu¬
cation by these fantastic Corybantic rites. The first thing to ob¬
serve, as friend Prodicus is always remarking, is the right use of
words. The Greek word manthanein sometimes means “know”
or “understand,” and sometimes “learn” or “apprehend,” and
the Sophists are pointing out to the boy that he had overlooked
this ambiguity. This sort of exercise, Socrates opines, is only
sport, because it teaches nothing about real things. It only
enables us to trip people up by playing on the double meanings
of words, as practical jokers draw a stool from under one who is
about to sit down and then laugh to see him sprawling supine.
Socrates has thus indicated at the beginning the chief source of

274 E

On Meno 70 A

275 c

Charm. 154 E
Symp. 203-4

275 E

Theact. 166 A 5

275 D

On Lysis 204 B

276 AB

276 BC

276 E

277 D 2
Symp. 176 B 4

On Meno 76 E
On Crito 54 D
On Laches 197 D

277 E

278 A

Soph. 239 E ff.

Ar. Soph. El. 165
a X2

1 62

WHAT PLATO SAID

278 E
On 275 A

278 E

279 I>

280-81

281 E

282 B
Symp. 184 C

282 C

282 D

282 E

283 D

283 E-285

284 B

284 C
284 D

284 E

285 A

On Laches 186 C
Parmen. 163 A 8

all fallacies, and whatever farcical absurdities may ensue, the
reader is forewarned.

Meanwhile, by way of relief from these verbal gymnastics,
Socrates offers a specimen of his own amateur method of pro-
treptic or hortatory discourse. It is, in effect, a resume of a mi¬
nor Platonic dialogue: All men desire to “fare well,” to have
many “goods” as wealth, health, bodily vigor, family, power,
honor — virtue, Cleinias will add, though some would dispute
that, and above all wisdom, which completes the list of “goods.”
Good luck, they finally agree, is superfluous, for the man who
knows how is generally speaking the lucky man in any crisis.
But none of the things that men call goods are really goods un¬
less wisely used. Unless wisdom guides, even the virtues may
do more harm than good. Hence wisdom is the only certain and
absolute good, and to gain this one may without dishonor serve
and subject himself to its possessor — provided wisdom can be
taught. Cleinias thinks it can, and Socrates, thanking him for
delivering them from so long and difficult an inquiry, concludes
that this is a specimen of his simple, unscientific, hortatory dis¬
course which he presents only in order to elicit something more
scientific from the Sophists. Let them show what wisdom, what
specific knowledge, will make men happy and good. Their re¬
sponse is to argue that if his friends wish Cleinias to become
wise, they wish him to be what he is not, that is, not to be. Fine
friends and lovers they are. This ill-omened word provokes a
dramatic altercation between them and Ctesippus, an admirer
of the boy. On your own head be that falsehood! exclaims Cte¬
sippus. There is no such thing as falsehood, they reply. You
either speak (of) a thing by itself or you don’t. No one can say
the thing that is not. Hence all speech is of things that are.
Why yes, but not as they are, interposes Ctesippus. Good men
tell the truth and speak of things as they are. Then good men
speak ill — of evil things, rejoins the Sophist. You bet they do,
and they will speak ill of you if you don’t watch out. Do they
speak hotly of hot things? They do, and they speak frigidly of
frigid jesters like you. Socrates tries to appease the quarrel with
the remark that it is not worth while to wrangle about the use
of words. If the Sophists have discovered or learned how to
“destroy” men so that they will not be bad and foolish but be good

EUTHYDEMUS

163

and wise, he is willing not to be. If his friends are afraid for
Cleinias, let the Sophists try their art on the vile Carian corpus
of Socrates himself. They may cut him up and boil him in a pot
as Medea did Aeson, if only they will make him (not-to-be-bad
but) to-be-good; and Ctesippus, too, is ready to be flayed like
Marsyas for virtue's sake. He contradicts them not in anger but 285 d
only to answer what seems to him mistaken. Contradict, the 285 d
Sophist picks him up — there is no such thing as contradiction.

Everything has its own logos . One either does or does not say Laws 895 D
that which is. That which is not is nothing. If I speak of the
thing and you of something else, you are not contradicting me. 286 b

Two things are to be noted in this passage: First, the begin¬
ning of the method hereafter employed by the Sophists of taking
any word used by their interlocutor as the starting-point of a
fresh quip or argument; second, the fact that Socrates' further
ironical observations about the fallacy of being and not-being
which has always surprised him, which he attributes to Pro¬
tagoras, and which he says refutes itself, prove conclusively that 286 bc
Plato is already perfectly clear in his mind on this point, and
that the corresponding passages of the Republic and the Sophist
are only varying developments of ideas long since familiar to
him.

Having now made everything clear to the intelligent reader,

Plato can afford to let himself go in satire and Aristophanic
farce. The fallacies attributed to the Sophists become more and
more outrageous, and Socrates' evasions or suggestions of the
right answer become mere hints to the discerning. If there is no 287 ab
error, how can you teach, as you said you do. “Said!" they re- Theaet. 161 de
tort. “Deal with what we say now; the past is a bucket of
ashes.” “But what does ‘deal with' mean except ‘refute,' which
you say is impossible? — Are things that ‘mean' alive or soul¬
less?" “Alive." “Then how can words mean?"

To relieve the weariness of unbroken farce, however, a con- 288 cd
tinuation of the protreptic discourse with Cleinias is introduced.

The conclusion of the former discussion was “Get wisdom, get
understanding." But what kind of wisdom ? Surely not the spe¬
cialized skill of the arts and crafts. In all these there is a divorce
between the art itself and the art of using its products rightly.

But we were looking for the knowledge that makes the right use

164

WHAT PLATO SAID

290 A

289 D 3

290 CD

290 C
Rep. 531 DE

290 D

291 A

291 D

291 E

292 B
Cf. 280 E
On Lysis 216 C

Cf. supra, pp. 7 1-72

293-304

293 B

293 BC

Theaet. 164 B 5
165 C 6-7

of “goods.” This cannot be the art of rhetoric, which is only a
form of magic or spellbinding, and moreover the writers of
speeches cannot use them. It is not the art of the general, which
is only a branch of the great art of hunting, and all hunters turn
over their prey to others to use. The mathematician, if he has
any sense, makes over his catches to the dialectician. The gen¬
eral who captures a city or a camp delivers it to the statesman.
The general’s art cannot be what we seek — a suggestion with
which Socrates credits Cleinias. Or, if Crito is skeptical, per¬
haps some higher being said it. Higher, indeed, says Crito. In
any case the reported dialogue ends like all minor Socratic dia¬
logues — in bafflement. The royal art, the political art, the art
that will make us happy, seemed to be the termination of their
quest. But what this royal art is and what kind of wisdom it
imparts they could not discover but pursued it idly like children
chasing larks. As in the Aeschylean line, this art sits at the
helm of the ship of state directing the course of everything. But
what specifically is its function, its work, as medicine produces
health and farming food? It must be good and nothing is really
good but knowledge or science. All other things are neutral,
neither-good-nor-bad. If it is the knowledge that transmits it¬
self only and makes others good, we ask again, “Good for
what?” And this damnable iteration brought us out by the
same door where in we went.

In other words, Plato could not or would not insert here the
entire teaching of the Republic and the Politicus. The artistic
purpose of variety, relief, and contrast having been accom¬
plished, Socrates appeals in his distress to the two Sophists, and
the farce is resumed and the mirth and fun grow fast and furi¬
ous — always, however, with sufficient indication to the intelli¬
gent reader of the distinction between this eristic and true dia¬
lectic and of the way in which Socrates could have met every
quip and fallacy.

Euthydemus offers to prove that Socrates already possesses
this knowledge, which Socrates thinks is better than being
taught it at his age. Socrates knows something. Ele is knowing.
He cannot be not-knowing. Hence, he, and everybody who is
knowing of anything, knows all things. And the two Sophists
claim to know all things, including the number of the stars,

EUTHYDEMUS

165

though, when rudely pressed by Ctesippus, they balk at the
proposed test of their knowledge of the number of each other’s 294 c
teeth. Does Socrates doubt it? He doesn’t doubt their wisdom,
he replies with Attic courtesy. 29sa

Euthydemus then gives the argument another turn. Socrates 295b
is knowing with and by that with which he knows; is he not?

They insist on a categorical answer and will give no explanation
of their meaning, and admit no qualifications or distinctions. 29Sb<i.

He is always knowing then, and he must not add the qualifica- 295-96
tion “when he knows” or “of what he knows” or “by that with
which he knows.” When he tries to turn the tables on them by
asking if they know that good men are unjust, Dionysodorus 297 a
falls into the trap and blushes. But Euthydemus shifts the sub- 297 b
ject by picking up an allusion of Socrates to his brother, whom 298 a
he might invoke to help him fight the many-headed Sophist, and Cf. infra, p. 477
arguing that anyone who is a brother, father, or relative of any¬
body is a brother or father of everybody. For he cannot be both
a father and other than a father. The banter of Ctesippus 298
turns this into a farce. And again Euthydemus picks up the
incidental expression “many good things” to argue that you 209 a
can't have too much of a good thing, and if it is good to drink 299 b
medicine it is good to drink a cartload. Ctesippus, who is
catching on, counters with “Yes, if you are as big as the colossal 299 c
statue at Delphi.” If gold is good, continues Euthydemus, it
would be good to have your belly full of it. And Ctesippus 299 d
again counters with the story that the wealthiest Scythians fill Herod, rv. 65
their craniums with gold and drink from their “own” gilded
skulls and see them. Do they see things possible to see or im- 300 a
possible? quibbles Euthydemus, playing on the analogy of
Greek idiom. And to Ctesippus' “You say naught” he replies 300 b
with the question. Is it possible to speak (of the) silent? And
if it is not, as Ctesippus admits, how can he speak of stones and
iron? They aren't silent, retorts Ctesippus, on his mettle in the
presence of Cleinias; they cry aloud when I pass the smithy.

Ctesippus pursues his advantage and so exults in his victory
and in Cleinias' amusement that he swells to ten times his 300 d
natural size and fills the place with his guffaws. Socrates checks
Cleinias. Why do you laugh at such beautiful things? — Did you 300 e
ever see a beautiful thing? asks Dionysodorus, picking up the

WHAT PLATO SAID

1 66

301 a word. “Yes, many.” “Are they different from, or identical with,
the beautiful ?” Socrates, “greatly embarrassed” by this problem
of the Platonic philosophy, replies in the terminology of that
philosophy that they are different from “the beautiful itself’
but a certain beauty “is present” with them. “If an ox is pres¬
ent with you are you an ox?” Dionysodorus crudely asks, “or
because I am present with you are you Dionysodorus?” “God
forbid,” says Socrates. “How, then, can the presence of one
thing with another make that other other?”

Plato, of course, is not going to discuss the theory of ideas in
this connection. So Socrates attacks the Sophists with their own

3ox b weapons. The beautiful is the beautiful, the same is the same,
and the other is the other. They have missed this little point,

301 c but otherwise have done their business as befits good craftsmen.

3oi d On that principle, says Dionysodorus, it is fitting to “do the
cook’s business” by carving, flaying, and boiling him. This,

301 e Socrates thinks, sets the crown on their wisdom. But the exhi¬

bition is not yet ended.

302 a You can do what you please with your own animals. Have

you a Zeus Patroos? Euthydemus’ mistake provides Socrates
with a temporary evasion. Ionians have no Zeus Patroos, but

302 cd they have an Apollo Patroos, a Zeus Phratrios, and an Athena
Ar. soph.^1.^76 Phratria. Well, continues the Sophist, you have them, they are

302 de yours, they are living things, they are animals. You can sell
them or give them away. “Bully, [by] Herakles,” shouts Cte-
sippus. “Is Herakles a bully or is bully Herakles?” And at this

303 b climax the laughter, the applause, and the clapping of hands
Rep. 492 c made the very columns of the Lyceum ring, and Socrates was

303 c moved to make a speech congratulating them on their mastery
and praising the popular and benevolent character of their art.

303 e It is so easy that Ctesippus picked it up in a few minutes. They
must not be too generous or everybody will learn it and pay

304 ab them no thanks. They would best talk only with one another
°nHjpp.(Maj. or with those who pay them money. Rare things are prized,
Ar RhetV^I and water> though best of all things, as Pindar says, is the
cheapest. Socrates concludes his tale by proposing that he and
cf3242BD Crito enrol themselves as pupils of the precious pair. They
make no condition of age or ability or abandonment of business.
It is enough if the pupil pays.

EUTHYDEMUS

167

To make sure that there shall be no misunderstanding, a seri¬
ous conversation between Crito and Socrates is appended. Cri¬
to, like other Athenians, is always eager to hear some new thing.
He feels the absurdity of his censuring Socrates. But he reports
the criticism of a dignified bystander on these drivelers who
bestow on things of no account an unaccountable zeal, and are
the wisest practitioners of this kind of discourse. Do you not
blush, Crito, he says, for your queer comrade, who is willing to
submit himself to fellows who don't care what they say and who
catch at every expression? And yet, he repeats, they are the
ablest men in this kind today. The critic, Socrates is told, is
not an orator of the courts, but one who trains such. They are
the class that Prodicus described as occupying the twilight zone
between philosophy and politics. They think they are the wis¬
est of men and would be so esteemed but for the philosophers —
though when drawn into private debate they cannot hold their
own with fellows like Euthydemus. They argue plausibly that
they participate in both philosophy and politics, in each moder¬
ately and in due measure. It is not easy to convince them that
while a mixture of things good and bad is better than the one
and worse than the other, a mixture of two good things of differ¬
ent or conflicting tendencies is inferior to either. The applica¬
tion is obvious, whether philosophy and politics are good or
evil, or one is good and the other bad. These men who claim the
first place are really in the third. We need not for this reason
disparage them, but should hold them for what they are, and
should approve every man who devotes himself to any intellec¬
tual undertaking and manfully works it out. As for Crito's hesi¬
tation about the education of his son because many so-styled
educators are so queer, Socrates reminds him that in every oc¬
cupation the majority are bad. We must ask whether culture,
education, philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom is in itself a good
thing, and if it is, devote ourselves to it heart and soul, father
and son.

There is danger that the interest of the four or five incidental
ideas of this passage already noted may distract our attention
from its main purport and purpose. The anonymous critic is
surely Isocrates, or a disciple of Isocrates, though Plato, by not
using his name, leaves himself free like a modern novelist to dis-

304 c f.

On Lysis 206 C
304 D
304 E

305 A
305 C

Isoc. Antid. 41
305 C

305 D

30s E

Gorg. 484 C
On Phaedo 32 B 8

306 A

306 B

306 C

307 A

Erast. 133 C
Isoc. Antid. 175

307 C

i68

WHAT PLATO SAID

claim any personal intentions. The critic expresses himself in
Isocratean style, and his invidious identification of (Platonic)
philosophy and dialectic with the eristic of the Sophists is a
well-known touch of Isocratean malice. It is this which pro¬
vokes the sharpness of Socrates' retort. The main lesson of the
whole dialogue is perhaps conveyed in the remark that this rhe¬
tor and publicist cannot hold his own in discussion with eristics
Parmen.^35 d Euthydemus. That recalls the statement in the Parmenides
that a man cannot attain to wisdom without exercising his mind
on what seems foolish logic chopping to the multitude. Eristic
and dialectic are divided by as thin partitions as great wits and
madness. One must study sophistry to overcome it. It is more
than probable that this moral is in Platonic fashion suggested in
272 e advance by the warning of the daimonion that constrained Soc-
Apoi. 40 a 6 rates to linger in the gymnasium and so not miss the intellectual
exercise of this bout with the Sophists.

PHAEDO

The Phaedo is both an artistic and a philosophic masterpiece.
But though the dramatic structure provides an appropriate
framework for the ideas, it is not an organic body on which they
depend. The dialogue is often referred to as Plato’s treatise on
the soul, but the question whether its theme is immortality or
the Ideas is as idle as the debate whether the subject of the Re¬
public is justice or the ideal state. There is a broad suitability in
making immortality the theme of discussion on the day of Soc¬
rates’ death. That is all. Indeed, the apparent subordination of
the ideas of the Phaedo to the predetermined purpose of proving
personal immortality has obscured for many readers their phi¬
losophical significance and their influence on Aristotle.

The student of Plato’s art will first take note of the skill with
which the long series of severe dialectical arguments is broken
up and distributed through the story of Socrates’ last hours and
relieved by episodes of pathos and moral eloquence. A further
dramatic touch is added by the vicissitudes of the argument for
immortality and the hopes and depressions that accompany its
retreats before objections and its rallies to meet them.

Phaedo, who was present, narrates at first in a low, quiet,
colloquial tone the story of Socrates’ last day to Echecrates at
Phlius, and possibly, as is conjectured, to an audience of Py¬
thagoreans. It is always a pleasure to him, he says, to recall his
memories of Socrates. There were present of Athenians Apollo-
dorus, Critobulus and his father Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes,
Aeschines, Antisthenes, Ctesippus of the deme of Paeania,
Menexenus, and others. Plato was ill. Of strangers there were
present Simmias and Cebes, Phaidondas from Thebes, and from
Megara Euclides and Terpsion. Aristippus and Cleombrotus
were reported to be in Aegina. On the news that the ship from
Delos had arrived, the friends assemble at the prison a little
earlier than usual, wait while the officials, the eleven, are re¬
leasing Socrates from chains, and entering find him with Xan¬
thippe who bursts into lamentations and is led away home at her

169

63 B-E, 69 A ff.
76 BC, 81-82,

84 C-85, 89 B ff.
90 E, 96-100

On Prot. 316 AB

57 A

Symp. 172 B
Charm. 153 C 3

58 D

Xen. Mem. IV. 1. 1
Prot. 315 B 2

59 B

59 D

170

WHAT PLATO SAID

60 A

116 B

60 B
Gorg. 496 E
Phileb. 50 B
60 C
60 D
Apol. 20 B
Phaedr. 267 A

60 E

61 A
61 B

Herod. 1. 46

Frogs 1508-9
61 C

61 D

Syrap. 181 A, 182
A 8

Prot. 334 A-C
Isoc. Panath. 223

62 B

Laws 902 B, 906 A

Crit. 109 B 7
Eurip. Or. 418
62 DE

63 A
63 A

Eurip. Hippol.
1441
63 B

Cf. 1 14 D

Eurip. Ale. 745
63 C
63 D

61 E
63 E

husband’s bidding. There is nothing in this or in her absence
at the end to justify the notion that Socrates’ attitude toward
her is harsh and inhuman. He spends several hours with her and
his family in the afternoon.

Socrates, rubbing down his leg, numbed by the chains, re¬
marks on the close connection of pleasure and pain and thinks
that if Aesop had observed it he would have represented them
as a creature with two heads and one body. That reminds
Cebes that the poet and philosopher Evenus commissioned him
to ask why Socrates while in prison had versified and set to mu¬
sic Aesop’s fables. It was from no desire to rival Evenus’ repu¬
tation as a poet. It was because a dream frequently admonished
him to make music. He had supposed it to mean the daily music
of the philosophic life, but now, scrupulous not to neglect the
possible literal interpretation, he had written a proemium to
Apollo and selected as a theme for verse the fables of Aesop,
which he knew, because a poet must compose tales, not argu¬
ments, and he himself was not an inventor of tales. Tell Evenus
that and bid him follow me with all speed, adds Socrates with an
Aristophanic touch. If he is a philosopher he will wish to do so.
It is not lawful for him to end his life by violence. Cebes as an
associate of the Pythagorean Philolaus must understand that,
though he may wonder if this is the one absolute prohibition in
a world where everything else may be either good or bad accord¬
ing to circumstances. The secret doctrine that we are on ward
and must not desert or try to escape is too deep or too high for
Socrates. But he can understand that we are chattels of the
gods and should await the bidding of our master.

But, objects Cebes, why should the philosopher wish to leave
this world which good gods govern? Socrates is pleased by the
inquiring spirit of Cebes and the opportunity of an argument.
And Simmias adds the further point that his friends are hurt by
Socrates’ willingness to leave them. Socrates will defend him¬
self and will try to be more convincing than he was in the court¬
room. He believes that there is something after death and some¬
thing better for the good than for the bad. At this point the leit¬
motif of the impending death is introduced for the second time.
The keeper sends word that a larger dose of hemlock will be
needed if Socrates heats himself with discussion. Let him pre-

PHAEDO

I7I

pare a larger dose then, is the characteristic non possumus of
Socrates’ reply.

The argument proceeds. Death, the separation of soul and
body, is something which a philosopher who dies to the body
every day he lives ought to welcome. Philosophy is the quest of
reality, the apprehension of pure ideas, grasped only by thought,
without the obtrusions of sense, in which even the poets tell us
there is no truth or reality. He who laments at the prospect of
death is not a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the
body, and therefore a lover of wealth and of honor. And not
only are the body and its appetites perpetual impediments to
the higher activities of the soul, which they clog with loves, de¬
sires, fears, and phantoms. They are the real causes of war and
faction and strife, for the pursuit of wealth makes war inevi¬
table, and the service of the body compels us to pursue wealth
as well as deprives us of leisure for philosophy and the pure
contemplation of reality. The philosopher will strive to purge
himself of this infection, for it is not lawful for the impure to lay
hold on the pure. If the endeavor of philosophy is to release us
from these chains of the body, how unreasonable not to welcome
the complete release which is death. If men have willingly died
in the hope of reunion with earthly loves, how much more gladly
should the lover of wisdom go to that unseen world where only
he may hope to see wisdom face to face. What ordinary men
call bravery is a form of cowardice. They face danger from
dread of something that they fear more. So their temperance is
a prudential calculation of the pains that intemperance may
bring in its train. The reality of what men call virtue is found
only in those who dominate their bodily appetites and purge
their souls of them. The so-called virtue of the lovers of the
body is a balancing of pleasures and pains against one another,
while true virtue and wisdom are a purification of the soul from
all subjection to such appetites and desires.

Ah, my dear Simmias, have a care lest this may not be the
right way of barter and exchange where virtue is concerned, to
balance pleasures against pleasures and pains against pains and
fear against fear and greater against less like coins. It may be
that the one true currency for the interchange of all these things
is wisdom, and that all our actions and choices when bought and

63 e

Gorg. 524-2S

64 C

64 D ff.

65 CD
67 DE

65 DE

66 A
65 B

68 BC

66 C

Rep. 373 DE
(Loeb)

66 DE

67 C

68 AB

Cratyl. 403-4
Eurip. Suppl.
9Q0-1030

68 CD

Rep. 442 E-443 A
68 E
68 C

69 A

Gorg. 512 D 7

172

WHAT PLATO SAID

sold at this price and with this coin become in very deed bravery
and temperance and justice and, in a word, true virtue, when
conjoined, I say, with wisdom, whether pleasures and pains and
all other things of the sort are present or absent. But when they
are divorced from wisdom and interchanged with one another
69 b I fear that what we then call virtue is truly a thing only fit for
slaves and utterly devoid of soundness and truth, while the re¬
ality and the truth is in very deed a sort of purifying of the soul
from all these things, and temperance and justice and bravery
and wisdom itself are a purification. This is the truth at which
the mysteries hint: Many are thyrsus-bearers but few are genu¬
ine bacchants.

Cebes is pleased with this moral eloquence, but has his doubts
about the dogma of immortality and demands proof. Men are
inclined to believe or fear that the soul is a breath, a vapor that
death disperses and destroys. Socrates opines that even a come¬
dian could not say that in discussing this theme today he is
prating of what does not concern him.

rhe first proof offered is the apparent sophism that every-
70 d ff. thing grows out of or is produced from its opposite. If waking
72 c did not come from sleeping as sleeping from waking, all things
would fall on sleep and Rip Van Winkle wouldn’t be in it. And
if in the cycle of correspondence integration did not compensate
for disintegration, evolution for dissolution, all things would in
Gorg. 46s d 4-5 one another’s being mingle as in the philosophy of Anaxagoras,
Symp. 187 A and heterogeneity would be swallowed up in indefinite incoher-
onTheaet. !83a ent homogeneity. By this law of correspondence, then, death
comes from life and life from death, and if the living come from
72 de the dead, the dead must be living in the other world. To this
Cebes adds the suggestion that Socrates’ favorite doctrine that

72 e all learning is reminiscence is a further confirmation. That doc-
Meno 81 c s. ti ine, he says, with obvious reference to the Meno, is proved by

73 a the fact that skilful questioning can elicit geometrical truth from

those who have never been taught geometry. Socrates develops
73c the thought. It is a case of the association of ideas which, in¬
cluding association by likeness and unlikeness, is here explained
74 a ff. for the first time in literature. Experience never can give us the
pui e mathematical ideas which sensation and perception awak-
74 de en in our minds. There are no perfect circles or equalities in

Matt. 20:16,
22:14

69 K

70 A

70 BC

PHAEDO

173

nature. Yet we do conceive them, and we feel how far concrete
circles and equalities fall short of the ideal toward which they
strive. This feeling is due to reminiscence, which is a kind of
association of ideas. We are reminded by the imperfect copies
in the world of sense of something that we have seen or known
in another state of existence. We are not born with knowledge
of these things, for real knowledge can render an account of its
ideas, and Simmias fears that tomorrow no man will be left who
can really render an account of the matters that we are discuss¬
ing. We have to recover this knowledge. What we call learning,
then, is really glimpses of a former sight, and recovery of a
knowledge that is our “own.” And so, generalizing, as surely as
pure ideas and pure ideals exist, so sure it is that our souls ex¬
isted before they entered the bodies whose perceptions give us
the imperfect approximation to the ideal.

The combination of this argument with the preceding princi¬
ple of the generation of opposites from opposites is supposed to
prove the past as well as the future existence of the soul. Yet
doubt persists. There is a child within us who fears that death
may disperse the life-breath, especially if one dies in a high
wind; and when thou art gone where shall we find the magician
to charm this terror away? Wide is Hellas, and many are the
tribes of the barbarians among all of whom you must continue
the quest, replies Socrates, in a possible allusion to Plato's
travels.

After this relief from dialectics we renew the argument and
confirm our conclusion by analogies. Surely a composite and
material thing is more likely to perish than a simple, immaterial
essence. The soul is in every way more akin to the immaterial,
the unchanging and the eternal, the body to their opposites.
And as opposed to the mutable multiplicities of sense, the in¬
visible things, apprehended by the mind, from which the objects
of sense take their names, are realities that never change. It is
when the body is too much with it that the mind is dragged
down into the world of change and itself wanders and is dazed
and confused. Moreover, the mind rules the body when they are
conjoined. If, as we learn from the Egyptians, a well-condi¬
tioned body under favorable circumstances when embalmed sur¬
vives death so long, what may we expect of the soul ? Will it not

75 b

76 B

On 63 D

On Lysis 221 E

76 DE

77 A

77 C

On 70 A

Isoc. 1. 19

78 B ff.

78 C

Ar. Dean.405a3o

79 B

78 E

78 D-79 D
Symp. 21 1 B 4
Phaedr. 247 D 7
Tim. 52 C

79 C

80 A
94 C

Rep. 474 C

80 C

*74

WHAT PLATO SAID

80E-81 a return to its like released from mortal passion and soilure? Yet

81 d earthly souls may be drawn back to earth by their unpurged ap-
On Phaedr ^248 petites ancj appear as phantoms and wraiths about tombs. We

Go?g.P524CD may fancy that they wander until they are reincarnated in

82 b animals that typify their several dispositions, the sensuous in

asses, cruel tyrants in wolves and kites, the tame domestic
Rep. 619 c “moderate” kind who have practiced the ordinary virtues with¬
out intelligence, in bees or ants or some other political animal.
82 c The philosophers only will return to the gods. They alone truly
ii4c love wisdom, and desire to be free from the impediments which
the body puts in the way of its acquisition. They only control
their appetites and instincts for these reasons and not from fear
on 68 c of waste, as the lovers of wealth, or fear of disgrace, as the lovers
of honor. Their virtue is not the weaving from such sensations
84 a of a Penelope’s web perpetually undone. Philosophy, which re-

82 e leases them from the prison-house of the appetites, teaches

83 a them that, as even the poets say, all the reports of the senses are
65 b full of deception, and bids them retire from these things as an-
83B chorites into the world of pure thought. It is in order not to for¬
feit this release that they abstain from sensual excess, for they
alone know that every sensuous pleasure and pain rivets the
soul to the body as with a nail, and strengthens the animal faith
for which only the material is the real. Their contemplation
and the food of their thought is the true, the divine; and so
living, and expecting in death the riddance from all mortal

Rep. 346 e (Loeb) miseres and the return to their true home, they will await it
without fear.

on Meno I& b After a moment of awed silence, Socrates, observing Simmias
Rep. 449 b and Cebes talking in low tones, asks if they have any objections

84 d to raise. They have, but hesitate to speak for fear of giving pain

to Socrates. They must think him, he replies gently smiling,
84E-85AB less of a prophet than his fellow-servitor of Apollo, the swan
which sings in its death hour, from pure joy, for no bird sings
on 63 d when sad. He is ready to continue the discussion so long as the
8s b Athenian eleven permit. Simmias is emboldened to speak. No
man can be certain in so difficult and obscure a matter; yet he is
a weakling who does not test all the theories proposed to the
uttermost, and either discover the truth, or, failing that, take
the best and most plausible of human hypotheses as the raft on

PHAEDO

x75

which he sails through the voyage of life. Unless — unless, he
wistfully adds, we can find some divine logos , some word of god
which will more surely and safely bring us to the haven. Sim-
mias’ difficulty is that the soul may be only the organization of
the material elements of the body, hot, cold, moist, and dry, a
harmony, so to speak, of its strings which can no more be ex¬
pected to survive the body’s dissolution than sweet song to
maintain a disembodied existence when the lute is broken. Soc¬
rates suggests that they hear Cebes’ objection so that he may
have time to consider his answer to both. Cebes’ difficulty also
embodies itself in an image. May not the body be the vestment
of the soul? One man wears out many garments, yet the man
dies at last still wearing the last garment. The soul may survive
the body. It is not therefore immortal and indestructible.

Echecrates, here almost in the role of the chorus in tragedy,
expresses the discouragement of the original audience at this
apparent overthrow of what seemed a sure proof. Is there no ar¬
gument that we can trust? Phaedo remembers with admiration
the characteristic sensitiveness and quickness of perception with
which Socrates noticed the discouragement of the company then
at this sudden reversal of what had seemed so securely estab¬
lished. Playing, as was his wont, with Phaedo’s hair, he said,
‘‘Tomorrow I suppose you will clip these fair locks.” “I suppose
so, Socrates.” “Nay, clip them today if the argument is dead
and we cannot revive it, and vow like the Argives not to let
them grow till victory is ours. Let us renew the battle and I will
be your helper, your Iolaus, while yet ’tis light. But however
that may be, let us be on our guard against the hatred and dis¬
trust of reason, against misology, the worst intellectual habit
of all, that of not finding, of not looking for certainty in any¬
thing. The greatest misfortune that can befall any man is to
become not a misanthropist but a misologist, a hater of reason,
argument, and rational discussion. Misanthropy is due to the
reaction from excessive trust to excessive distrust in disregard
of the truth that extremes are rare in all things. The majority
of men are mediocre — not bad, wherein, however, the analogy
between arguments and men does not hold,” Socrates slyly
adds. “But as uncritical experience leads to misanthropy, so
uncritical dealing with arguments makes men hate and distrust

8s d

86 A

86 B

86 C

86 E

87 B

88 B

88 E

Crito 43 B 7
Phaedr. 263 C 4
271 E 1

89 B

89 C

Hipp. Maj. 286 D
7

On Euthyd. 297 D
89 D

Lysis 218 D 2

89 E

90 A

90 B

WHAT PLATO SAID

QO C
Rep. 538 DE
Cratyl. 440 CD
Rep. 454 A (Loeb)
go D
go E

gi A
Crito 46 E
Gorn. 457 CD
Laches 196 B
Charm. 166 D 5

gi B
gi C

92
92 CD

93 A

93 B

Rep. 523-24

93 AB

93 BC

94 A

On Euthvph. 9
DE

94 AB

93 A

93 BC

I76

reason and discussion because reason and discussion sometimes
mislead and disappoint. And so eristic and contentious debaters
come to believe that they alone have apprehended the great
truth that there is nothing sound and stable either in things or
in our reasonings about them. Let us rather attribute our fail¬
ures to ourselves and not to the nature of things or the defects of
reason.” It may be that Socrates in the present case is uncon¬
sciously prejudiced by his situation and is like uneducated de¬
baters contentiously and unphilosophically eager to prove his
thesis. If the soul is immortal his faith is well; if his belief is an
illusion the error will soon perish with him. But their concern
must be not for Socrates, but for the truth. Else like the bee he
will die, leaving his sting behind.

Several considerations dispose of the analogy of a harmony.
First, it is a mere analogy and stands in irreconcilable conflict
with the valid proof that the soul possesses ideas, ideals, and a
priori judgments not derivable from present experience. And,
furthermore, a harmony cannot go counter to the elements or
parts of which it is composed. Again, a soul regarded as an en¬
tity, an essence or, to anticipate, an Aristotelian substance,
either is or is not, as a finger is or is not a finger. It does not, like
qualities, admit of degrees of more or less. But a harmony
would be more of a harmony and a larger harmony if it were
more harmonized and to a greater extent, supposing such a
thing possible. And if we are to apply the theory seriously to
the soul, it will compel us to say that virtue and wisdom in the
soul is a harmony within a harmony or superadded to it, and
that is inconsistent with our original assumption that soul can¬
not be more or less soul. By this principle, if the soul is a har¬
mony it can never be more or less of a harmony — it can never in
fact partake of disharmony or evil at all. All souls will be equal¬
ly good and there will be no evil soul. A hypothesis that in¬
volves such absurdities cannot be right. Moreover, as already
suggested, a harmony cannot go counter to its parts. If the soul
is a harmony it can act only as the ductless glands and the ten¬
sion of the nerves determine. Its opposition to its appetites and
Odysseus’ rebuke to his own heart become inexplicable.

The precise interpretation of this passage has been disputed
from antiquity to the present day. Against the interpretation

PHAEDO

177

here given it has been urged that the ancient musicians denied
that a harmony could be more or less harmonized. Plato him¬
self seems to state it as an assumption that might be challenged,
and some ancient interpreters explained that by more or less he
meant only louder and fainter. In any case, the argument starts
from the fact that soul cannot be more or less soul, which would
seem to require the antithesis that on the contrary a harmony
may in some sense be more or less harmony. This incidental
philological problem must not confuse our apprehension of the
essential meaning of the passage. Harmony in Greek means
also structure or organization. Galen and later writers some¬
times use the synonym “crasis” in discussing this argument,
which is also the word used in Parmenides’ statement of a ma¬
terialistic psychology, and by Simmias himself as a synonym of
harmony. Plato’s main argument is thus entirely independent
of all musical association; but to the confusion of literal-minded
logicians he does not scruple to play with the musical meaning
of the word and to base further confirmations on it. The theory
that the soul is a harmony means that the soul is only a name
for the total structure and co-ordination of the parts of the
body. Socrates’ argument is in its essence a refutation of mate¬
rialism. It shows that no plausible identification of the soul
with a hypothetical material organ or instrument will bear
thinking out or can be realized in imagination. That is true. It
is virtually repeated in the later satirical account of Socrates’
youthful endeavors to understand materialistic psychology, and
it is scientifically proved for all subsequent psychology in the
Theaetetus .

The analogy of the garment is in effect a challenge to produce
a definite and conclusive proof of the absolute imperishability
and immortality of the individual soul. Plato was as well aware
as we are that this cannot be done. But he was willing to make
a show of proof by identifying the soul with the idea of life,
which like other ideas comes and goes unchanged while the ob¬
jects which it informs come into being and pass away. A philo¬
sophical commentary on the entire passage would involve the
theory of ideas, its relation to the Aristotelian logic, its bearing
on the problem of causation, including teleology or the theory of
final causes and the Idea of Good, and, lastly, the rather idle

93 ab

Diels, I, 163,
frag. 16

86 B

96 B

95 B ff.

i78

WHAT PLATO SAID

96 Aff.

Cratyl. 392 A 1

96 B

96 C

97 B
97 CD

On Theaet. 143 B

98 B

98 D

99 B

question which has already occupied too much space in recent
Platonic literature, whether the experiences described by Soc¬
rates really belong to Socrates or to Plato, or, as I think more
probable, are both or rather typical. In any case we have to
note, as already said, that much of the philosophical signifi¬
cance of the passage is independent of the validity of the proof
of personal immortality, and, second, that Plato’s literary art
has so ingeniously complicated the question that to this day
there is little agreement among commentators as to the*precise
description of the fallacy which most admit is present some¬
where in the argument.

The severity of the dialectic is relieved as usual by little hu¬
man or humorous touches and dramatic incident, and as Homer
cast description into the form of action, so Plato, like Matthew
Arnold and other modern imitators of Arnold, presents argu¬
ment in the form of a personal quest for the truth. When I was
a young man, Cebes, says Socrates, I was marvelously enamored
of the wisdom which they call the study of nature or natural
“history.” I thought it would be a lordly thing to know the
causes of everything and why it comes into being, passes away
and exists. And many a time I turned my thoughts upside down
and inside out investigating such problems as this: Is it as some
affirm by means of a certain fermentation of heat and cold that
animal life coagulates, and is the blood the organ of thought or
is it air or fire, or is it the brain that furnishes the sensations
of sight, smell, and hearing, from which are derived memory and
opinion, while from memory and opinion, in turn attaining to
stability, arise knowledge and science? And considering the de¬
cay of these things in turn and all the phenomena of earth and
heaven, I finally grew so muddled in mind that I decided that I
was entirely incapacitated for this sort of inquiry. Socrates goes
on to say that, dissatisfied with this type of explanation, he
looked about for some other account of the causes of things.
Anaxagoras’ doctrine, which he heard somebody reading from
his book, that mind is the cause of everything, appealed to him.
But on reading the book himself, he found to his disappointment
that Anaxagoras made no use of his principle, but explained
everything mechanistically which is as if we should confound
cause and condition and assign as the cause of Socrates’ presence

PHAEDO

l79

in the prison the structure of his bones and muscles and not his
idea of the best, his faith that it was better to tell the jury the
truth and better not to bribe the jailer and let those same bones
and muscles carry him off to live in dishonored and dishonorable
exile in Boeotia. Failing to discover either a mechanical or a
teleological philosophy of causation, he fell back on the simpler
theory of ideas as the second-best thing. He feared lest, as those
who try to view an eclipse of the sun directly and not in some
reflection are blinded, so he might be blinded in soul if he at¬
tempted to apprehend things directly by the senses. So he took
refuge in words or discussions. The analogy is not perfect, for
he does not admit that discussion is a less direct approach to
truth than sense. At any rate, he fell back on reasoning and dis¬
cussion. His method was to assume a proposition, a hypothesis,
and posit as true whatever agreed with it. The proposition, the
hypothesis, he now proposes to assume is the reality of his
much-talked-of ideas. If that is granted, he can explain his
simple theory of causation and prove that the soul is immortal.
If the ideas are causes, all other notions of causation must be
dismissed. The cause of any state or quality, as beauty, is the
presence of or participation in — it makes no difference which
— the idea of that state or quality. Plato is apparently aware
that this in modern terms is only a tautological logic, or, as I
have repeatedly put it, a consistent and systematic substitution
of the logical reason for all other forms of cause. That is the pri¬
mary meaning, whatever the metaphysical implications. It is,
says Socrates, a simple and perhaps a foolish method, but it is
his own and is at any rate safe. But as already said, it must be
used exclusively. Simmias is not taller by a head, and two is not
two because one thing has been added to one, or contrariwise
because one thing has been split in twain. Two is two because
the idea of two or the dyad is present with it, and Simmias is
taller than Socrates because there is present with or in him a
tallness relative to the smallness in Socrates. The right method
of dealing with this and all hypotheses is to develop its conse¬
quences and observe whether they are consistent or inconsistent.
If the hypothesis itself is challenged, we must support it by an¬
other higher or more general hypothesis, and that in turn, if
need be, by another, till something sufficient is reached. To dis-

99 a

Crito 53 B-D
52 D
50 A

99 CD

Laws 897 D
99 E

100 A

100 B

100 D

100 D-101 CD

100 E

101 BC

101 C

102 C

zoz E

180 WHAT PLATO SAID

cuss the hypothesis and its consequences at the same time is the
method of muddle-headed eristics.

103 c-107 The proof of the immortality of the soul that follows is an in¬
tricate argument that virtually identifies the individual soul
with the imperishable idea of life. Plato’s art manifests itself
in the skill with which he has so complicated the fallacy that
modern interpreters rarely agree as to its precise location or
description. We cannot infer from this conscious art Plato’s own
belief or disbelief in personal immortality. That, as modern ex¬
amples show, is a faith or unfaith, a hope or despair that cannot
be safely deduced from a man’s philosophic or scientific opin¬
ions. The question has been and will be discussed elsewhere.
107 b As regards the Phaedo , we can only repeat his own words. The
cf. 85 c magnitude of the question and our sense of human weakness
force us to doubt. No rational man will affirm that our fancies
114 d of the world to come are literally true. But if the soul is immor¬
tal, something like them must be true, and since the stake is
107 c then an eternal hazard, it is good to dwell upon them and repeat
Infra, p. 537 them like a spell or incantation.

After all this argument and narration, the dialogue is appar¬
ently to conclude with a myth — like the Gorgias and the Re-
114 d public . If the soul is immortal, Plato believes that it is well to let
the imagination exercise itself on the possibilities of its after¬
existence, even while recognizing that it is all a play of fancy.
107-8 ff. Socrates pictures the universe as he conceives it. The picture is
in purpose akin to other images which Plato invents in order to
get the ratio of sensuous to ideal existence into a proportion.
509 Df. Other examples are the Divided Line in the Republic , where the
term eikasia or “conjecture” is generalized for reflections in mir¬
rors and water, which are to things as things are to ideas; the
517AB image of the cave, where the cave and the fire and the shadows
are to the ordinary world and the sun what these are to the ideas
247 c ff. and the Idea of Good ; and the vision of the super-Uranian world
109 Bff. in the Phaedrus. Similarly, here we are told that the earth we
live in is an obscure region of marshy sediment, while the true
109 e surface of the earth is at the circumference of the air above
looking out on the brightness of space. The description ind¬
ue b-hib dentally anticipates the Apocalypse and the modern idea of the
beauty of the universe, the chorus of the angels in Faust , Bry-

PHAEDO

181

ant’s “Song of the Stars,” and Tennyson’s “We should see the
globe we groan in fairest of their evening stars.” Then, to com¬
plete the proportion, we descend beneath the surface of that
earth in which we dwell and picture a subterranean world, a sort
of Dantesque hell. Some of the depressions, hollows, and cavi- hicd
ties of the earth are deeper than that in which we live; some
shallower. All are interconnected by devious subterranean
channels through which infinite waters, hot and cold, flow from
one to the other of these bowls, as it were, as the lava streams in m de
Sicily flow, bearing mud and slime in their course. The main
cause of their oscillations is a great central shaft bored right m e-hja
through the earth, to which Homer refers by the name of Tar- n.s. i4>4si
tarus. All the streams flow into and debouch from this Tartarus mA
and take their quality from the earths through which they flow.

Within this bottomless hollow the waters surge to and fro, draw- m b
ing winds in their train as in the alternations of breathing. Tim. 79 ab
When the waters return to the region that we call “below,” they
fill up the rivers of that world like irrigators plying the shadoof, me
When they surge back to our side of the world, they fill our recep¬
tacles in turn, and the waters, running through their wonted
channels, create seas and lakes and rivers and fountains; and
then, diving beneath the earth, some at the point of issue, some 112 de
opposite to it, after longer or shorter circuits, fall into Tartarus
once more, some far, and others a little, below the point at
which they were pumped out, but none below the centre, for be- 112 e
yond that the path would be uphill for them from either side.

Among these manifold streams are four of special note, Ocean,
the outermost, that encompasses all, opposite Ocean Acheron, 112E
that, after flowing through desolate regions, comes to the Ache-
rusian Lake where the souls of the dead are gathered at ap- „3a
pointed times. Midway between is Pyriphlegethon, that, issu- h3ab
ing into a fiery region, creates a lake of boiling water and mud,
larger than Mare Nostrum, and, coiling about the earth, comes
to the verge of the Acherusian Lake, but does not commingle its
waters therewith, and then, after many subterranean windings, h3b
falls into Tartarus lower down. This is the source of the lava
streams that sometimes overflow the earth. Opposite this the
fourth stream, which the poets call Cocytus, issues into a wild,
savage, and gray-blue place, named Stygian, and makes a lake

1 8a

WHAT PLATO SAID

called Styx. Its waters acquire dread virtues there; and then,
sinking beneath the earth and circling in the opposite direction
to Pyriphlegethon, it meets it at the Acherusian Lake; neither
does it mingle its waters with any, but, after a circuit, it falls
into Tartarus at the opposite point from Pyriphlegethon.

107 d Now, when the souls of the dead come to the place to which
Rep. 614 c° his daemon conducts each, they submit themselves to judgment.

113 d Those who have lived fairly good lives mount vehicles appointed

for them and journey to the lake where they abide, undergoing
purification for their sins and receiving rewards for their good
i:3 e deeds. The incurable are hurled into Tartarus, from which they
G«g!si3B3 never issue forth. Those whose sins are great, but not incurable,
ii4a must needs be cast into Tartarus, but after a year the wave
spues them forth, those guilty of manslaughter to Cocytus,
those who have wronged their parents to Pyriphlegethon. And
Laws 857 a when they come to the Acherusian Lake, they cry out and sup-
869 ab plicate their victims to pardon them and receive them to the
114B lake. If they win grace, they come forth and find surcease from
their pain; if not, they are swept away and must return from
year to year till the souls whom they have wronged relent.
Those who are judged to have lived exceptionally holy lives are
delivered from the prison-house of this world and sent to dwell

114 c aloft in the habitations of the pure in the earthly paradise. And
82 bc of these, those who have been sufficiently purified by philoso-

Gorg. 526 c phy live without bodies for all time to come in even fairer habi-
?haedr. 248 d 3 tations, which words and time fail us to describe.

Gorg. 526Ide But this is the cause, dear Simmias, why a man should bend all
Rep. a. effort }n this life to achieve wisdom and virtue, for fair is the

H4 d prize and the hope is great. No sensible man would affirm that
these things are precisely as I have described them, but that
something like this is true, if and since our souls are immortal,
we may repeat and venture to believe. It is a noble venture,
and we ought to croon such words over to ourselves, which is
114DE why I have spun out the tale to such length. So let every man
be of good cheer who in his life has disdained the lower pleasures
as alien to his real self and productive of more harm than good,
and who has arrayed his soul not with external decorations, but
with the ornaments that belong to it, even sobriety, righteous-

115 a ness, courage, freedom, and truth. Such a man may await with-

PHAEDO

183

out fear his passage to that unseen world. You, friends Simmias
and Cebes, and the others will journey thither each in his due
time, I even now, as a poet might say, hear the one clear call of
fate and the summons to join the innumerable caravan — and I
think it is time for me to bathe and spare the women the trouble
of washing a dead body.

But the human interest of the Phaedo is too warm to conclude
on this impersonal note. We return to the prison and Socrates’
last moments, narrated with the simplicity of supreme art.
What messages have you, Socrates, and how shall we bury you ?
asks Crito. My message is what it has always been: Take
thought for your own souls and live in view of the life to come.
To bury me you must first catch me, the real me that will have
eluded you and flitted away. Do not say “bury Socrates,” since
to speak ill is not only in itself discordant, but it harms the soul.
Bury my body as you think fit and as custom requires.

Then follow the three simple immortal pages that have drawn
tears from sixty generations of readers — the bath, to save the
women the trouble of washing a corpse; the long interview with
his wife and children and his last injunctions to Crito; the return
to the company of friends; the entrance, with the warning that
the hour has come, of the attendant, who bursts into tears and is
thanked by Socrates for his sympathy; Crito’s protest that the
sun is still on the mountains, and that others in like case feast
and indulge their senses for hours after the final summons; Soc¬
rates’ reply that others may think they gain by this but that he
would only gain his own self-contempt by thus greedily strain¬
ing for the last few drops of a spent life; the steadfast look, as
of a bull, with deep-set eyes beneath shaggy brows with which
he confronts the bearer of the cup and inquires what he must
do and whether it is lawful to offer a portion in libation to any
god; the calm serenity of countenance with which he drains it
off, praying for “quiet consummation” and peaceful passage
hence; the temporary withdrawal of Crito, unable to bear the
sight; the tears of the company and the sobs of Apollodorus,
whom Socrates rebukes, “having heard” that a man ought to die
amid propitious sounds, which was why he dismissed the wom¬
en; the chill that gradually crept toward Socrates’ heart, when
after walking about he lay down; the enigmatical last words.

Cf, Menex. 236 D
5

115 B

On Apol. 29 DE
115 C

Laws 959 A-C
On Ale. I. 130 C 3

115 E

116CD

116E
On 63 D

116 E

117 A

117 B

117 BC

117 CD

1 17 DE

117 E

184

WHAT PLATO SAID

a “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius, see that the debt is paid”;
the final movement of the body, and the reverent closing of eyes
and mouth by Crito, who has returned. “Such was the end,
Echecrates, of our comrade, a man, as we should say, the best
of all the men of that day whom we knew, the most righteous,
and the most wise.”

MENEXENUS

The little Menexenus is a strange blend of jest and earnest, of
satire and patriotic eloquence. Its date, the only certain date
of a Platonic dialogue, may be plausibly fixed about the year
386, by the latest event to which it refers. Plato would have
been about forty years old. There are many conjectures, none
of them verifiable, as to its purpose and purport. Plato may
have wished to show that he could write oratory too. He may
have wished to prove his patriotism and propitiate those whom
the attack on Athenian statesmen in the Gorgias had offended. 515B-519D
He may have wished to compete with Isocrates and give a
practical illustration of his own theory of epideictic rhetoric. He
may have amused himself by yielding to a casual impulse to
write. The genuineness of the little work is beyond question,
and we need not waste time on the arguments of the athetizers,
some of whom have recanted.

The dramatic introduction recalls the manner of the Phae-
drus. Socrates meets Menexenus, fresh from the agora and sen¬
ate-house. The young man is evidently planning to enter poli¬
tics and to continue the tradition of his house, which always
supplies the Athenians with rulers. Possibly, he says, if Socrates
approves. But now he has come from a meeting of the council
for the appointment of a speaker at the public funeral of those
who died in the last war. Socrates, who, Menexenus says, is
always “guying” the orators, launches into an ironical felicita¬
tion of the dead, on the magnificent funeral they will receive,
and the encomiums that will be pronounced over them by ora- 235 a
tors whose topics of praise include what is and what is not true, on symP. iQ8 d
and who hold us spellbound by their fine language. He himself On Euthyd. 290 A
on such occasions feels himself swelling visibly with pride in his
country, and if strangers accompany him, this augmentation of
his dignity and self-importance lasts for several days. Menexe¬
nus opines that the time is so short that the speaker will be at a
loss and will be compelled to extemporize. Nonsense, says Soc¬
rates. These rhetors keep a stock of patriotic commonplaces on

185

On Lysis 206 D
234 A

234 B

235 C
234 C ff.

235 B

235 C

235 D

1 86

WHAT PLATO SAID

235 DE
Phaedr. 234 DE,
235 DE

236 A

236 B

Phaedr. 278 D

236 D
Phaedr. 228 D,
237 AB, 243

On Symp. 1S5 C

On Laws 636 A

237-39

Symp. 194 E 4

237 B

Ar. Rliet. 1357 a

237 D

Lucret. V. 810-16

238 A
238 B

238 C

238 D

hand, and it is easy to extemporize when you are praising
Athenians to Athenians. The real test of an orator would be to
praise Athenians to an audience of Peloponnesians. Menexenus,
like Phaedrus a little piqued, asks Socrates if he could do as
well himself. He could. His teachers have been Aspasia and
Connus, and even an orator who had been educated by Lampros
and Antiphon could praise Athenians among Athenians. Me¬
nexenus challenges him to make good his boast, and Socrates re¬
calls (a monstrous anachronism) a speech for the occasion,
which he learned from Aspasia, who pieced it out with remi¬
niscences and remainders from the speech she prepared for
Pericles.

Socrates, after some dramatic byplay of demur in the manner
of the Phaedrus , recites the speech. It begins with a slight paro¬
dy of the Gorgian and Isocratean figures of antithesis and as¬
sonance: In act these men have received the recompense that
is their due, and, thus honored, proceed on their destined way
attended by the public cortege of the city and the private escort
of their friends; and now in speech too the guerdon that re¬
mains to pay the law bids render them, and so we must.

Then follow the familiar topics of the Athenian funeral ora¬
tion in praise of Athens, interspersed with didactic comments
on the proper method and style for such speeches.

We will praise first their birth and then their deeds. They are
autochthons, true children of the soil. Their land is dear to the
gods, as proved by the strife and judgment of Athene and
Hephaestus. It is the motherland of men, as proved by the cer¬
tain sign that it first bore the grain that is the appointed food
of man, the only creature that knows justice and the gods. The
earth does not imitate the woman, but the woman the earth.
Being free from all grudging and envy, her sons distributed this
food to all the world. Thereafter she produced the olive, soother
of toil, and the mysteries of gods that we need not name, since
we know them.

So born and bred, the ancestors of these men always main¬
tained the same constitution under different names. Some call
it democracy; some give it other names. It is in reality an aris¬
tocracy or rule of the best, as chosen by the approving judgment
of the multitude. Kings we have always had, sometimes elec-

MENEXENUS

187

tive, sometimes hereditary. But power is in the hands of the
people who give office and rule to those whom they deem the
best. No one is excluded by poverty or by the obscurity of his
ancestors. The one criterion is the reputation for wisdom and
goodness. The equality of our birth is the source of this consti¬
tution. We are no nondescript rabble whose unlikeness gives
birth to unlike governments, tyrannies, and oligarchies, where
the citizens look upon one another as masters or slaves; but our
equality of birth seeks equality before the law.

Socrates — that is, Plato — then passes over the prehistoric and
mythical achievements of Athens on the ground that the poets
have revealed them to all men in song, and, entering upon a
survey of Greek history from the Athenian point of view, shows
that a philosopher can deal quite as licentiously with historical
facts as an orator when it suits his purpose.

As he warms up to the subject, however, sincere patriotic feel¬
ing prevails over satire and the ironical manipulation of the
facts of history. He celebrates with genuine eloquence the lib¬
eration of Greece by the Athenians, the only true-bred, autoch¬
thonous Hellenes in whom hatred of the barbarians is ingrained
and instinctive, their self-sacrificing helpfulness toward the
other Greeks, their exemplary moderation in their own civil
wars. And he concludes with an apostrophe to the children of
the glorious dead, expressing what their fathers said or would
wish to have said to their sons, which Cicero tells us was read an¬
nually at Athens and which is still read in schools throughout
the world today as one of the world’s noblest and most inspir¬
ing utterances of essential patriotism.

To our sons this message: The virtue of your sires is proved
by their readiness to die rather than bring shame on you and
the generations to come. Bear our words in mind, and whatso¬
ever else you do, conjoin it with the practice of virtue. Without
this, all other possessions and pursuits are vain and shameful.
The coward piles up wealth for another, and beauty and
strength conjoined with a dastard soul only make its shame
more conspicuous. Science divorced from righteousness is knav¬
ishness, not wisdom. Therefore first and last and evermore
strive with might and main and strenuous endeavor to surpass
us and your forefathers. In this rivalry our victory will be our

238 E

239 B

239 D ff.

240-41
237 B

242 D, 245 D

243 B

On Polit. 262 D

243 E

246 D

246 E

247 A

1 88

WHAT PLATO SAID

247 B

247 C

Soph. Antig. 898
Phaedo 115 A

247 D

247 D 6
Laws 687 C

247 E

248 A

248 B

249 A
Laws 926 D ff.
Isoc. Peace 82

249 D

On Laws 731 D

shame and our defeat our joy. You will surpass us if you do not
live on our fame. To have it is a glorious inheritance; to waste
and spend it and not transmit it to your children augmented by
deeds of your own is most shameful and unmanly. If you heed
this admonition, you will descend to us loved and loving, on
your appointed day. If you neglect it and play the weaklings,
there will be none to give you glad welcome.

Our parents we bid bear their lot as best they may. The gods
have granted the chief of their prayers. They did not ask for
immortal but for good and honorable sons. It is not easy for a
mortal man to have all things fall out in accordance with his
heart’s desire. If you are truly goodly sires of goodly sons, you
will be moderate in your grief. “Nothing too much” is an old
and excellent saying — yea, most excellent. He whose happiness
depends as nearly as may be on himself alone and not on the
vicissitudes of another’s lot is the truly sober, wise, and valiant
man. He will take fortune’s buffets and rewards with equal
thanks, never too much elated or depressed by her caprices.
Such men we show ourselves today; such we expect you to be.
If indeed the dead feel aught, this and not your mourning and
lamentation will please us best. We commend our wives and
children to your care, who in caring for them will best forget
your grief, and to the state that will provide for the education
of the one and the old age of the other.

Menexenus thinks Aspasia fortunate, indeed, if she, a woman,
can compose such speeches as that. “Come and see for your¬
self,” rejoins Socrates. “Nay, I have met Aspasia and know
what she is.”

SYMPOSIUM

Many regard the Symposium as Plato's artistic masterpiece.
In detail it offers abundant illustrations of the niceties and the
beauties of Plato's style. In structure it is quite simple. Apol-
lodorus, who has been a follower of Socrates about three years,
in conversation with an anonymous friend tells how Socrates
long ago took one Aristodemus as an uninvited guest to the
banquet which Agathon gave on the night after his first victory
in tragedy and repeats, as Aristodemus reported them, the after-
dinner speeches made on the general theme of love. Apollodorus
had verified Aristodemus’ account of them by questioning Soc¬
rates himself, and his own memory of them is fresh, for he re¬
cited them a day or two ago to a friend on a walk from Phaleron
back to town.

The chief larger feature of the literary art as it affects the
thought is the succession of speeches skilfully arranged to ex¬
haust many aspects of the topic, to secure variety and relief,
and to lead up, in the Platonic manner, to the rhetorical climax
of Agathon's speech, which turns out to be not the climax after
all, because a greater height of idealistic eloquence reveals itself
behind in the speech of Socrates.

An afterpiece portrays the irruption of the half-drunken Alci-
biades upon the party, his delivery of an encomium on Socrates
instead of a speech in praise of Eros, and the final scene when
all the others have departed or fallen asleep, in which Socrates
forces the drowsy Agathon and Aristophanes to admit that so
far as poetry is an art, a really scientific poet could compose
both tragedy and comedy.

Socrates, freshly bathed and wearing his sandals, meets Aris¬
todemus and urges him in Homeric phrase to go with him “un¬
invited to the banquet of the good," but himself falls behind in
meditation on a problem. Aristodemus' embarrassment at en¬
tering without his sponsor is relieved by the Attic courtesy of
Agathon, who assures him that he did his best to find him yes¬
terday. A servant reports that Socrates has withdrawn to a

189

172 c

173 A

173 B

212 D
215 A ff,

223 D

174 A
II. II. 408

174 DE

174 E

Phaedo 83 A

190

WHAT PLATO SAID

175 A
175 c

Ep. xm. 360 B

175 DE

176 A

176 E

177 C

178 B

neighbor’s portico and disregards his summons to dinner. The
banquet begins and Socrates at last entering is urged to recline
next to his host that Agathon may absorb the wisdom that came
to him in the portico. It would be a fine thing, Socrates says,
thus stamping as spurious the superstitious thirteenth epistle,
if knowledge could be siphoned by personal contact from one to
another as water flows through wool into the emptier of two
cups. What in any case is his disputable wisdom compared with
that of Agathon which shone forth before thirty thousand
Athenians?

When after eating they turn to their wine, it is agreed that
there shall be no compulsory drinking, since most of the com¬
pany have not yet recovered from the potations of the bigger
banquet of the previous night which Socrates had avoided.
Eryximachus, the physician, further proposes that they dismiss
the flute-girl to play to the women inside and entertain them¬
selves like scholars and gentlemen with conversation. For the
subject of their talk he suggests the praise of love. It is “not his
tale” but a theme suggested by Phaedrus whom he has often
heard complain that while formal rhetorical encomiums have
been composed on every conceivable trifle, love has hitherto
been overlooked — so great a god!

All approve, and Phaedrus, who speaks first, beginning with
the general praise of love and the neglect of the poets to tell of
his birth, develops the thought familiar to modern readers from
Coventry Patmore and Tennyson — not to go back to Dante and
Guido Guinicelli — that

There is no subtler master under heaven
Not only to keep down the base in man
But teach high thoughts and honorable deeds,

or, as he puts it, in a much-quoted phrase, to teach the sense of
EP. iv. 320 a 4 shame for what is base and emulation for what is honorable and
178 e fair. An army of lovers would be invincible. Love only can
Eurip. Ale. 155 teach men to die for another, as Alcestis died for Admetus,
and Achilles to avenge Patroclus. These all honor, but Orpheus
170 d the cithara-player, who did not dare to die, the gods dismissed
with a cheating phantom.

180 cd Pausanias wishes to introduce a distinction. There are two

SYMPOSIUM

191

loves, as there are two Aphrodites, the heavenly and the earthly
or Pandemian. We should of course praise all gods but observe
their differences. Love in itself is neither good nor evil. All ac¬
tions are what our use of them makes them. We must speak
well of all gods but distinguish their functions. The followers
of the Pandemian Aphrodite do what they happen to. Their
love is the love of the body, not of the soul. The nobler Eros re¬
veals itself especially in the friendship of man and youth, in the
eagerness of the lover to mold the youth in all excellence, the
readiness of the beloved to submit to the only slavery that is not
disgraceful, voluntary subservience to one who imparts wisdom
or virtue to the soul. At even the perjuries of lovers the gods
laugh, men say. The love of a coral lip will pass with the first
bloom of the body that kindled it; the higher love of soul and
character is as enduring as they. The true lover does not love
boys, but waits till the promise of youth gives assurance of its
fulfilment. This ought to be law. The good are a law to them¬
selves.

These are the main points of Pausanias’ speech, intermingled
with some local hits on the Spartans and Thebans, and some
touches of humor and Greek sentiment distasteful to modern
feeling.

When Pausanias came to a pause, to express it in polyphonic
prose, it was the turn of Aristophanes, but he had the hiccoughs,
and challenged the physician Eryximachus either to prescribe
a cure or to speak in his place. Eryximachus does both. Aris¬
tophanes is to hold his breath, gargle, tickle his nose, and
sneeze. The physician’s speech generalizes love or desire as a
physiological and cosmic force of attraction and repulsion to be
observed in animals, plants, and all things, and applies Pau-
sanias’ distinction of higher and lower to this larger idea. The
two loves, the wholesome and unwholesome appetite, are found
in our bodies, and medicine is the science of the loves of the
body in respect to repletion and inanition. The physician sub¬
stitutes healthy for unhealthy desires and reduces hostile oppo¬
sites to harmonious love and friendship. This tension and recon¬
ciliation of opposites is a universal principle, epigrammatically
but illogically expressed by Heraclitus when he says that differ¬
ing from itself it is drawn together like the harmony of a bow or

On Lysis 216 C
180 E-i A
On Euthyd. 280
Ef.

Rep. 331 C (Loeb)

181

Cf. 20Q C
Phaedr.252D-3C
184 C

Theocr. 13. 8-15

184 C 6
Cf. 183 A 6
Euthyd. 282 B

183 B
181B

183 E
181 D

Ale. I. 103 A,
130-31

Prot. 309 A

182

185 C

185 CD

186-89

186 C

Theaet. 167 EC
186 D

192

WHAT PLATO SAID

a lyre. For so long as it differs there is no harmony. The har¬
mony begins when the difference ceases. But at any rate the
Tim. 80 a principle can be observed in gymnastics, farming, music, and in

187 de the use of music in education. It can be observed in cooking,

whose aim is to reconcile pleasure with health, and in the

188 bc changes of the seasons and the weather. Everywhere we must

take note of the two loves and foster the good and suppress the
bad.

189 a Aristophanes begins with some humorous remarks on a sneeze
as the cure of hiccoughs. He marvels that the cosmic order of
1S9B our bodies has to be restored by such a convulsion. After some
further banter Aristophanes offers as his contribution to the
theme what some have thought a parody of Empedocles, a
Rabelaisian myth of the original spherical man-woman with
four hands and four feet and other parts to match. The gods
t9o d split this creature for its arrogance and presumption, symbolized
od. xi. 314 in Homer’s tale of Otus and Ephialtes who piled Pelion on Ossa,
and, if we are not good, will divide us again as the Arcadian un-

193 a ion was divided by the Lacedaemonians and will split us into

silhouettes like the flat reliefs on tombstones. They left the
191 a navel as a mark of this division, and turned our faces round so
that we might contemplate it as a warning admonition. This
warning might also warn modern interpreters not to take the
details of the teleology of the Timaeus too seriously. More seri¬
ous is the interpretation in which passionate love has always
recognized itself, that love is really the quest for the divided half

191 d of ourselves and the yearning for an impossibly complete re-

192 d union.

194 a Agathon and Socrates remain. A little banter between them
cf.crit. 108 c about their stage fright relieves the attention before Agathon’s

speech. Agathon, Socrates says, is accustomed to a larger stage.
But when the question arises which is more awesome, a large
Xen. Mem. in. 7. aucjience or a few w}se meri) phaedrus interposes a veto. If Soc-
194 d rates can find a handsome fellow to argue with, the subsequent
223 a proceedings will interest him no more.

Agathon’s speech, composed in “polyphonic prose,” is a per¬
formance worthy of the brilliant youth in his hour of triumph.
It is in one aspect a specimen and a parody of the rhetorical art
of encomium. It employs in advance many of the topics enu-

SYMPOSIUM

i93

merated by Aristotle and later rhetoricians. It repeats the idea
of the Lysis and some pre-Socratics that love brings like and
like together and anticipates the Politicus and Timaeus in the
conception of a primeval chaos which Agathon says was ended
by the rule of love. The so-called fallacies in which humorless
critics have seen Plato’s intention to disparage Agathon are the
jesting quips of an after-dinner speech. Love is soft, because he
dwells in men’s hearts and does not, like Homer’s Ate, walk on
their heads, which are often “solid ivory.” He is temperate, for
temperance is mastery over pleasure, and no pleasure can master
love. He is just, because the laws, rulers of the city, ratify vol¬
untary contracts, and everybody is willing to do anything for
love. He is brave, for even Ares couldn’t resist him. He is wise,
for he makes everyone a poet and no one can teach what he does
not know. He is master and teacher of Apollo, the Muses,
Hephaestus, Athena, and of Zeus himself, lord of gods and men.
The speech culminates in a Platonic tour de jorce of parody or
emulation of the Gorgian style. Love brings

To mortals peace, to wind-vexed ocean calm,

And to the tired couch sweet slumber’s balm.

He alienates hostility, conciliates civility, bringing us together
in the union of such communion with one another, in festivals,
dances, and sacrifices, leader and guide. To mildness impelling,
all wildness expelling, donor of kindness, disowner of unkind¬
ness, gracious to the good, beheld by the wise, beloved by the
gods, desired by the hapless, acquired by the happy. Of wan¬
tonness, daintiness, luxury, grace, desire, and longing the sire;
regardful of the good; regardless of the bad; in labor, in ter¬
ror, in yearning, in learning, guide, consorter, supporter, and
savior best; of all gods and men the glory; the leader fairest and
rarest whom every man should follow fairly, fair hymns re¬
citing, wherein delighting he casts his spell on the minds of
gods and men alike.

A burst of applause proclaims that Agathon has spoken
worthily of himself and of the god. And Socrates finds in it a
confirmation of his stage fright in following so brilliant a speak¬
er. From another point of view the purpose of Agathon’s speech
is to provide a climax which we think cannot be matched until

195 AB

19s CD
Polit. 273 B
Tim. S3 A

195 DE
H. XIX. 92

196 C 5

196 BC
196 D

196 E

197 B

197 C

198 A

194

WHAT PLATO SAID

we find it surpassed by the speech of Socrates. In order to
separate these two culminations by the relief of a prosaic level,
Socrates begins very quietly with a few remarks and questions
intended also to point the contrast between rhetoric and dia-
igS-ggB leCtic.

The usual method of encomium is to attribute all good quali¬
ties, false or true, to the object praised. But Socrates can only
tell the truth. He never agreed to praise love in this style. His
199 a 5 tongue may have promised, his mind did not. Farewell. Aga-
thon is compelled to admit that he has identified love with the
199-200-201 beloved, not, as he should have done, with the lover. In fact, he
201 B 12 did not know what he was saying. He (Agathon) is not irritated
as Callicles is in the Gorgias (505 C). Love, Socrates continues,
is not itself all the fine things which Agathon’s encomium attrib¬
uted to it. It desires what it hath not, the beautiful. This true
philosophy of love Socrates modestly and courteously says is

201 de not his own. He learned it from the prophetess Diotima. He

too once lauded love as a potent and beautiful god. But Dio¬
tima, after inflicting a lesson in logic, explained to him that love

202 de is not a god but a demon, the intermediary and the interpreter

between the gods and men. Love, a little interpolated myth ex-

203 b plains, is a child which Penia or Want got to be begotten upon

her by Poros, Resource, when he was drunk with nectar at the
banquet in which the gods celebrated the birth of Aphrodite.
And love thus partakes in the conflicting qualities of his con-

203 ccf. trasted parents. He lacks like his mother, and like his father is

an eager and enterprising seeker, hunter, sophist, juggler, and
Lysis 218 a philosopher, or lover and pursuer of wisdom. No god is a philos-
Phaedr. 278 d opher or a lover of wisdom, for God already possesses it; no

204 a hopelessly ignorant being, for hopeless ignorance is precisely the
20s d false conceit of knowledge without the reality — the self-suffi-
192 e ciency of self-content. Love is not the desire for the other half,

205 e 3 nor yet for our own, unless by “our own” we mean the good. It
is not the love of the whole, for men will cut off hands and feet
Matt Cm25^2 ^ that best for them. The misapprehension of Aga-

a .5 29 30 tjlon ancj Socrates about his true nature is due to the fact that

204 c they identified love with the beloved instead of with the lover.

205 b Just as the habit of language specialized poiesis or “making” to

one kind of creation, poetry, so ordinary usage limits love to one

SYMPOSIUM

J95

kind of desire. But in reality all thirst for good and happiness is
the supreme and cunning lure of love for every creature. What
we ordinarily call love is a special form of the desire that good
shall be eternally ours. That is impossible for a mortal creature.
The nearest semblance of it is reproduction that secures a kind
of immortality by succession. Love, then, is the desire of repro¬
duction in the beautiful, for the ugly repels it. Beauty is the
Moira and Eilithuia, the fate and the birth-goddess of genera¬
tion. The obscure definition as usual is explained. It is the
yearning for an immortality and a permanence which the con¬
ditions of mortal existence withhold. For the Heraclitean princi¬
ple that all things flow and change applies not only to our bodies
but to our souls, our characters, our opinions, our pleasures and
pains, which are never the same from day to day. Knowledge
itself is a perpetual forgetting and recovery, not a fixed thing.
This instinctive yearning for something that endures and abides
explains the irrational potency of love even in animals and the
sacrifice of the individual to the offspring. It is the passion of
eternity, which ordinary materialistic minds can satisfy only by
leaving children of the flesh to take their place after them,
while poets and statesmen point to their poems and institutions
and say, “these are my children/’ This thirst for immortality,
then, is the common principle that manifests itself in the in¬
stincts of animals and in that last infirmity of noble minds, the
love of fame, which would be incomprehensibly irrational if it
were not a form of the desire for immortality. This reveals itself
in poetry and in the work of inventive craftsmen. But its no¬
blest manifestation is the love of social order, the passion for
soberness and righteousness, and the conversation on these high
themes of elder friends with youths of beautiful souls and — if it
may be — beautiful bodies.

This is the first stage of initiation into the philosophy of love.
But there is a higher mystic doctrine in which Diotima doubts if
Socrates can follow her. The passion for the beautiful, which
begins as devotion to one beautiful body, generalizes itself in the
love of all bodily beauty, and then rises by successive gradations
through the love of beautiful souls, thoughts, laws, institutions,
to the contemplation of the infinite sea of the beautiful, and the
final apprehension of the absolute, timeless, spaceless idea of a

205 D

206 A ff.

206 B
206 D 2

207-8

208 AB
208-9

209 DE

208 CD

209 AB
Apol. 22 C 9

Rep. 402 D
Gorg. 487 E

209 E

On Meno 76 E

210 B

Ar. Pol. 1338 b 1 2

WHAT PLATO SAID

196

beauty that transcends all the particular embodiments whose
beauty is derived from it by participation, and which come into
being and pass away while it remains eternally the same. This
alone makes life worth living for the philosopher and confers
212 a upon him immortality so far as that is attainable for man.

This climax is followed and relieved by the afterpiece of the
irruption of Alcibiades and his comus-band. A noise as of revel¬
ers is heard outside, and then the voice of Alcibiades in the fore-
212 d court shouting for “Agathon, Agathon!” Thereupon, attended
by a flute-girl as Dicaeopolis in the Acharnians , flushed with
wine, and crowned with a wreath of ivy and violets as Aris¬
tophanes in Browning’s Aristophanes' Apology , he stands at the

212 e door and proclaims that he has come to crown Agathon, and

213 a will enter only on the stipulation that the company is to drink

with him. Invited to make a third on Agathon’s couch, he
2,3 b starts on discovering Socrates lying in ambush for him as the
third, and after some banter proposes to crown not Agathon but
the marvelous head of Socrates who wins the victory in speech

213 e over all men always, and not merely once as Agathon yesterday.

He then appoints himself arbiter bibendi and challenges Socrates
to drain with him a huge half-gallon cooler filled with wine — to

214 a no effect, as he foresees, since no man has ever seen Socrates
220 a drunk, however much he drinks. As his contribution to the en¬
tertainment of talk that must accompany the drinking of Greek
gentlemen, he will not add another encomium on love but will

214 is a praise Socrates himself, challenging Socrates to deny the truth

of anything that he may say. Socrates resembles the hollow

215 b figures of Sileni in the shops, which when opened are found to be

full of images of gods. Marsyas the satyr cast a spell on men by
his fluting, but Socrates with no instrument but bare words has

215 d s. charms to compel them to self-examination, conviction of sin,

216 Bff. and even tears. His pretense of ignorance is asatyric trait; so are

216 e his lifelong irony toward all men and his habit of taking all things

in jest. Yet there is a deep seriousness beneath it all, and Alcibi¬
ades has seen the images of the gods within. And, being drunk,
218 b and warning the servants and the profane “to clap the heaviest
of doors upon their ears,” he will, like those who have been
bitten by the tarantula, tell to his fellow-victims, the other lov¬
ers of Socrates, who have all shared in the Bacchic madness of

SYMPOSIUM

197

philosophy, the tale of his own attempt to seduce the master
by his youthful beauty and of Socrates’ superhuman continence.

There is much more to tell. Socrates is no less invulnerable
to all other temptations and human weaknesses. In the cam¬
paign of Potidaea none could match him in the endurance of
hardships. He walked in the snow barefoot, and the soldiers
eyed him askance. Once, meditating on a problem, he stood
fixed in thought from dawn to dusk and all the following night,
and then, with a prayer to the rising sun, went about his busi¬
ness. In the battle it was he who deserved the prize of valor
which the partiality of the generals allotted to Alcibiades whom
he saved when wounded. Again in the retreat from Delium
when Alcibiades was in the cavalry and could observe Socrates
and Laches among the heavy-armed, his composure warned the
pursuing enemy that if they assailed him they would catch a
Tartar. He strode along, in the words of Aristophanes’ Clouds ,

As a penguin advances with sidelong glances
defiantly strutting and bridling.

There is none like him. We may compare Brasidas to Achilles
and Pericles to Nestor, but there is no parallel in Homer or else¬
where for Socrates. His words too, like himself, have this Sile-
nus quality; externally they are full of homely and trivial im¬
ages, but, opened up, they alone appear to contain sense and
reason.

A burst of laughter rewards Alcibiades’ frankness. There is
some further playful contention for the seat next to the hand¬
some Agathon. Then another band of revelers breaks in and all
is disorder. Eryximachus and Phaedrus and others of the weak¬
er heads depart. Aristodemus, the narrator, sleeps through the
long winter night and wakes at cock-crow to discover the inde¬
fatigable Socrates drinking and debating with the sleepy Aga¬
thon and Aristophanes who can hardly follow his proof that a
truly scientific poet could write both comedy and tragedy. Hav¬
ing put them to sleep, Socrates goes to his accustomed haunt,
the Lyceum gymnasium, washes himself, and passes the day
there as usual until evening summons him home to rest.

219 E EL

Charm. 153 A

220 B

220 C
220 D

220 E

Laches 181 B

221 A

221 B
1. 362

221 C
221 D

221 E-2 A

222 C

222 D-223

223 B

223 CD

223 D

Laches 180 BC
Lysis 204 A

PHAEDRUS

The contrast between the classic architecture of the Syviposi-
um and the Gothic art of the Phaedrus merely expresses the fact
that the two apparently distinct subjects of the Phaedrus , love
and rhetoric or literary criticism, and the variety of its motives
and episodes are not combined in as obvious and harmonious a
sequence and unity as are the successive speeches of the Sympo¬
sium. It is not, for that, less interesting and enjoyable in its
own way. The dramatic introduction is one of the best-known
things in Greek literature and has been endlessly imitated,
De or. 1. 28 paraphrased, and discussed from Cicero to Macaulay and from
Macaulay to the present day.

227 a s Socrates meets Phaedrus, who, after a morning of study with

Laws 789 d the orator Lysias, is going in obedience to the precepts of his
symp. 176 d physician Akoumenos for a walk without the walls to recon his
lesson, and though, like Dr. Johnson and Gibbon and Mme de

230 d Stael, Socrates prefers the streets and men to the trees that can
crito 52 b “teach him nothing,” he is lured like an ass by a green bough to
Lysis 211 ab accompany his young friend by the promise of a recital of Lysi-

227 d as’ speech. But before he lets Phaedrus practice on him, he

228 d catches sight of the manuscript peeping from inside the youth’s
Rep. 327 c himation and, with much comic banter, insists that it shall be

read verbatim. Their walk brings them to the spot by the banks

229 b of the Ilissus where Boreas is said to have carried off Oreithyia;

and to Phaedrus’ question whether he believes the legend, Soc-

229 c rates replies with a satire on the rationalizing science of my¬
thology which has lost nothing of its point today: It would not
be surprising if I were as skeptical as our savants. Then I could
229 co interpret it as a symbol. The girl played too near the edge of the
cliffs and was blown over by the north wind. These symbolisms
are very nice and pretty, my dear Phaedrus. But they are the
affair of ingenious and laborious persons whom I do not envy.
For once started on that path, you must go on to rehabilitate
or rectify Hippocentaurs and Chimaeras dire, Gorgons and
winged steeds and monstrosities innumerable, and explain the

I98

PHAEDRUS

199

hidden meaning that lies in them. This sort of philosophy takes
up a great deal of time, and all my leisure is preoccupied by the
Delphic inscription which bids me know myself, and find out if
I can whether my real self is the complex, passionate, smoke-
blinded Typhon huge ending in snaky twine of appetites that
I sometimes seem to be, or a simpler, gentler, humbler, clear¬
eyed creature by my true nature participant in the grace of God.

Walking barefoot in the cool streamlet, they finally settle
themselves in the grass beneath a shady plane, and Phaedrus
reads the speech, which some ancient and modern commenta¬
tors insist must be Lysias’ own, while others more reasonably
point out that there is no evidence of this, and that Plato could
copy any writer’s style. Lysias’ paradox is that youth should
bestow its favors on the non-lover rather than on the lover,
which Socrates says would be most democratic and popular, if
he would only add “on the old rather than on the young, on the
poor rather than on the rich.” The speech is a commonplace
development of the topics of such a thesis, with no hint of the
imaginative realization of the power of genuine passion to ideal¬
ize and purify, if not to justify, its excesses. Phaedrus admires
both the expression and the thought, but Socrates, while con¬
ceding the neatness and finish of the phrasing, thinks that Lysias
himself would not claim as much for the ideas. There is too
much confused repetition of commonplace. Socrates, inspired
perhaps by Sappho or Anacreon, could do better himself. He
feels the inspiration welling within him, and with some demur
and banter and the rejection of Phaedrus’ demand that he ab¬
stain altogether from the obvious and indispensable topics of
Lysias’ argument, he veils his head, and begins, after a mock-
heroic invocation of the Muses, a discourse that systematically
deduces the preferability of the non-lover from the definition
and the psychology of the conflict of passion and reason in the
soul. This psychology of the struggle between propensities and
ideals is supported by an etymology of Eros as absurd as any in
the Cratylus , and Socrates checks himself (as there) with the
remark that he is almost speaking in dithyrambs and appre¬
hends nympholepsy. He, however, continues his demonstration
that the inherent selfishness and fickleness of passion makes the
lover a less trustworthy, less profitable, and more disagreeable

On Charm. 164
DE

Ren. 588 B ff.,
O03 D, 611 BC
Charm. 155 DE
Tim. 72 D

230 A

229 A

230 BC

Cic. De or. I. 28
230 E

227 CD

231-34 c

234 CD

235 B 2

234 E

235 A

Cf. 264 A fi

235 c

236 C ff.

235 DE

Isoc. Soph. 12-13

237 A

Rep. 545 D
Ar. Rhet. III. 7. 1

237 C

237 E

238

238 BC

On Laws 701 CD
Crat. 396 DE
238 D

239-41

200

WHAT PLATO SAID

241 D 1
Cf. II. 22. 262
Cf. 238 CD

241 D

242 A

243 A
Rep. 586 C

l'soc. Hel. 64

243 C
On Theaet. 144
AB

242 BC
On Euthyph. 3 B

243 D 4

242 E 2
Symp. 202 DE
Rep. 379 BC

244 AB

244-45
244 B, 244 D 5,
245 A 1,249 D4

245 A 2

245 BC

245 C 2

245 C 5
Phileb. 30
Epin. 081 AB,
982-83

On Laws 641 D
Rep. 506 E

246 B 6
Laws 899 B
246 C
246 CD

companion to youth than the calm and considerate non-lover.
And when his poetical diction finally culminates in the hexame¬
ter line, wolves are enamored of lambs as the loved one is loved
of the lover, he checks himself in affected terror and refuses to
speak further.

After a pause, a little banter, and comment on the noonday
heat, Socrates announces to Phaedrus’ delight that he feels the
inspiration of another speech, a Stesichorean palinode, to the
majesty of love, which they have wronged by two speeches
more to be expected from brutal sailors than from men of gentle
and noble disposition. His wonted monitor, the divine voice,
checks him and will not let him depart until he has made amends
and washed the bitter brine of impiety from his ears with the
potable stream of a truer speech. If Eros is a god or at any rate
something divine, he cannot be evil. The recantation proves
by the example of the priestesses of Delphi and Dodona and the
Sibyl that madness is not always an evil and expounds the fa¬
mous doctrine of the four kinds of inspired madness and frenzy,
the prophetic, the orgiastic, the madness of the poet and of the
lover. The madness of the Muses, taking possession of a tender
and virgin soul, quickens and stirs it to revel in song and adorn
many fair deeds of the men of old for the instruction of poster¬
ity. But if any man not thus inspired knocks at the doors of
poesy in the fond belief that art alone will suffice to make him
a poet, he will never attain the goal, but compared with the
poetry of madness the poetry of the sober will vanish and come
to naught.

The proof that the lover’s madness is not an evil but a bless¬
ing to himself and the beloved will be long, and will involve the
whole question of the nature of soul, divine and human. The
clever will disbelieve it; the wise will believe. All soul, as being
the first principle of motion on which all generation depends, is
immortal. Only divine wisdom could define its nature. But we
can describe its likeness. It is like a charioteer (reason) who
drives two steeds, one disciplined (emotion, passion, thumos)
and the other unruly (appetite). All soul has charge of the soul¬
less and patrols the heavens, assuming different forms. The
soul that loses its wings sinks till it enters an earthly body and
forms a mortal animal. The immortal animal, soul and body

PHAEDRUS

10 1

conjoined forever (Arnold’s magnified non-natural man), is a
figment for which we have no evidence of sense or reason. But
let this be as pleases God. The “power of the wing” tends to lift 246 d 3
the earthy aloft to the habitation of the gods. Beauty, wisdom, 246 e
and goodness feed and foster this power; their opposites waste
it and destroy. First fares forth in heaven the mighty leader,

Zeus, driving his winged car and taking thought for all things
and ordering them aright. In his train follows the host of di¬
vinities and daemons marshaled in eleven bands. For Hestia
alone abides in the dwelling of the twelve gods. Many are their 247 a
evolutions and blessed visions within the heavens, each minding on Tim. 40 b
his own appointed task; and he who wills and has the power may
join their company. For envy has no place in the choir divine. 247 a 7

But when they go to that nourishment and banquet whereof
we spoke, straight up to the apex of the vault of heaven they
proceed till they stand on the revolution of the outer periphery 247 c
and contemplate what no poet has sung, the world of pure un¬
changing ideas outside, which are visible only to mind and not
to sense. That is rather the life of the gods. Mortal souls see 248A
more or less of the ideas in proportion to the skill of the chario- 250 a 2
teer and the quality and discipline of the steeds. Those who by 248 ab
fault of the charioteer, or vice of the evil steed, are weighted j4®£
down and fail of the vision limp away with broken wings and are 248 a
nourished on opinion. This struggle to catch sight of the plain of |4rotB35,3 co
truth is so fierce because it is the law of Adrasteia that the soul 247 b
which has caught sight of reality is safe for another period of the 248 c
cycle.

When a mortal soul is borne down by its earthly freight and 248 cd
loses its wings, it enters into higher and lower ranks of men,
corresponding to the extent of its vision of the ideas. The soul
that has seen most becomes a philosopher, a lover of beauty, a 248 de
musician, or a lover. The next becomes a lawful king or warrior,
the third a statesman or money-maker, the fourth a gymnast or
physician, the fifth a prophet, the sixth a poet or imitative art¬
ist, the seventh an artisan or farmer, the eighth a sophist or
demagogue, the ninth a tyrant. But no soul that has not seen 248 e
something of the ideas can ever enter into the human form, for Rep. 620 ab
it is distinctive of man to apprehend the manifold plurality of 249 bc
sensation in the unity of the idea. And this is recollection °nDT8heaet 147

202

WHAT PLATO SAID

On Meno 82 B
249 C

247 E
Tim. 37 E, 52 C
249 D

Symp. 218 B
Gorg. 458 D
Rep. 494 A
Phaedo 64 B
Euthyd. 306 E,
307 B
249 C

249 D

250 B

250 D s
Theaet. 169 C 1
250 BC

250-51

252 A
251 AB
251 CDE

252 B
252 C
Cratyl. 440 D 3

On Meno 86 B 5

252 C
252 D ff.

255 DE
On Lysis 212 B

255 E

253-54

256 C 6

256 E-257 A
On Phaedo 81 E

(avaj avrjdLs) of the things that the soul beheld when in company
with God it looked beyond the things that we now say are , and
looked out upon the things that really are. And for this reason
only the soul of the philosopher, whose inspired ecstasy is mis¬
taken for frenzy by the multitude, grows wings. For so far as
may be it always communes in memory with the things com¬
munion with which makes God divine.

The pertinency of this myth to the fourth form of madness,
that of the lover, is that, unlike justice, sophrosyne , and other
ideas, the idea of beauty has a not wholly inadequate embodi¬
ment in the world of sense. Could the eye behold in like manner
a true likeness of Wisdom, what passion would she inspire! But,
as it is, Beauty alone of all ideas has this prerogative. And so
the lover’s perception of the beauty of the beloved reawakens
the memory of the lost heavenly vision and kindles that yearning
for the ideal which is love. Plato proceeds to mingle jest with
earnest in a style that displeased some ancient critics and dis¬
concerts some modern admirers: Under this spell the lover is
completely absorbed in the beloved and careless of all human re¬
spects. Explain it if you please as the growing pains of the wings
or an effluence and influence from one body to the other, or say
with pseudoscience that “beauty acts by relaxing the solids of
the whole system.” At any rate, this is the power that mortals
call Eros and immortals Pteros from the constraining power of
the wing. One may believe all this or not, but it is the true
cause of the potent feelings whose operation in human life we
proceed to describe.

Ideals are as various as the pursuits of men. The true lover
seeks by his companionship to mold the beloved in the likeness
of his own patron divinity and his own ideal — political, poetic,
philosophical. That is the essence of true love which engenders
in the soul of the beloved an eidolon of Eros Anteros that he
calls friendship, not love. But the unruly steed, the appetite,
has other demands to which the lovers sometimes yield — the
better sort with misgivings and rarely. But sensuous intimacy
without ideal passion, prudential, niggardly, higgling, calculat¬
ing love, will send the Philistine soul bowling around the earth
and under the earth for nine thousand years. This, dear Eros, is
our palinode decked in poetic phrase for Phaedrus’ sake. Let

PHAEDRUS

203

Lysias take heed and like his brother, Polemarchus, turn to
philosophy that Phaedrus too may no longer halt between the
philosophy of love and rhetoric.

The three speeches provide the text and the concrete matter
for the discussion of rhetoric and literary criticism which occu¬
pies the last third of the dialogue. A pretty digression at this
point relieves monotony and forms the bridge to the new topic.
Phaedrus admits the superiority of Socrates’ second discourse
and fears that Lysias will seem tame if he consents to vie with it.
He may not consent, for a politician recently taunted him as be¬
ing a mere speech-writer, a scribbler of words. Plato, as we have
seen, sympathizes with his rivals and the objects of his satire as
against outside Philistines. And Socrates replies that Lysias is
not so easily frightened by the appellation of “writing fellow’’ or
“high-brow.” The very men who affect this contempt for writ¬
ers are themselves ambitious to attach their names to written
records as their authors. For what else are the laws and the de¬
crees of the Assembly? It is no shame to write, but only to
write badly. Shall we discuss, then, the principles of good and
bad writing? Why else care to live, replies Phaedrus, except for
the pleasures of the mind that are not like the pleasures of the
body preconditioned by painful wants and therefore only fit for
slaves? Yes, indeed, says Socrates, leisure is ours and the cica¬
das chirping above our heads would mock us if we let them cast
the spell of the sirens upon us and lull us to sleep in the noonday
heat and quiet like ignorant shepherd louts, instead of convers¬
ing and exercising our minds. They once were men, and when
the Muses were born, they were so enamored of song that they
forgot to eat and ere they knew it were dead. And now it is
their office to report to the several Muses the men who honor
and serve each of them here. So there are many reasons for dis¬
coursing and not slumbering at midday. Yes, there are, says the
awe-struck Phaedrus. The first requisite of good writing is
knowledge. The orator who thinks it enough to know what will
seem plausible to the mob is capable of charming them into the
belief that an ass is a war horse or of sowing the wind and reaping
the whirlwind by persuading them that evil is good. And if the
rhetorician insists that knowledge avails nothing without the art

257 B

257 C

Ar. Poet. 1456 a
18

257 C

Meno 93-94
Rep. 492 A

257 D

257 DE

258 A-C

On Laws 858 C
Minos 316 DE
258 D; Symp. 180
E

On Euthyd. 280
Ef.

258 E

Cic. De or. II. 5
Phileb. 42 C ff.
Rep. 583-84
Gorg. 493 E ff.
Phaedo 69 B 7

258 E

On Theaet. 172 C

259 A

Od. XII. 39
x55 ff- 4
Symp. 2i6 A 7

259 B

259 C
259 D

On Meno 86 B

259 E

Hor. A.P. 309 ff.

260 A
260 BC
260 D
260 E

204

WHAT PLATO SAID

261 A

261 A 8
271 CD

261 D 6

261 D 8
261 E 7

262 A ff.

263 D
On 237 E

264 A ff.

264 D

266 B

Od. II. 406, III. 30
etc.

267

268

269 A
Symp. 177 A,
186 ff.

268 B

268 D 5

269 B 8

of persuasion, we deny that it is an art unless it is based on
philosophy. Rhetoric is more than the oratory of the court¬
room. It may be generalized to cover all influence upon men's
minds by speech, including even the false dialectic that plays
with the ambiguity of abstract words in the manner of the
“Eleatic Palamedes” who made the same things seem like and
unlike, one and many, to his hearers. Men are more easily mis¬
led by words whose meanings differ slightly and so may be used
to lead by insensible transitions to a desired conclusion. And
only he who knows the real meanings can do this effectively.
The first step in this process is to define the subject in such wise
as to point to the conclusion desired. The speech of Socrates did
this. The speech of Lysias did not. He right valiantly said what
came into his head and no sense of artistic or literary necessity
determined the order of his topics. Like the famous epitaph on
Midas, it can be read in any order.

The second speech of Socrates, with its four kinds of madness,
though much of it was jest, as all writing must be, offers a seri¬
ous illustration of the method of division and classification
which underlies all science, and even a possible science of rheto¬
ric. Socrates is a lover of these distinctions and divisions, which
at least serve to make our meanings clear, and he follows as in
the footprints of a god those who can practice this method and
divide the one into its species or parts and recombine the many
in a synoptic unity. Rightly or wrongly, the name that he gives
to them is “dialecticians.” Lysias and the rhetoricians of the
day know nothing of this method. Their entire art consists of
technicalities, tautologies, and a pseudoscientific terminology
with which Socrates makes merry. The claim that these techni¬
calities make rhetoric an art is as if a man should think himself
a physician because he has memorized the effects of certain
drugs, a tragedian because he can develop the commonplaces of
pathos and pity and fear, an orator because he understands
brachylogy and eiconology. An Eryximachus, a Sophocles, a
Pericles, would laugh at such pretensions and ask with us if he
knows also the occasion and measure of their application and
how to combine them in a harmonious whole. This petty tech¬
nique is not the art but only the indispensable preliminary, the
grammar (in modern phrase) of the art. The successful practice

PHAEDRUS

2°5

of this as of any art calls for a combination of natural ability,
science, and study. But the art or science of it requires first a
broad philosophic culture such as Pericles acquired from asso¬
ciation with Anaxagoras, and, second, an application to the
material of rhetoric of the true scientific method of Hippocrates.
We cannot understand the soul without the nature of the whole
or even the body without this method. Hippocrates and right
reason bid us ask first, Is the thing simple or divisible into spe¬
cies? and then, What is the power to affect or to be affected by
other things of the thing itself and of every one of the species
into which we subdivide it? A scientific rhetoric, then, would
not only distinguish, as we have said, ambiguous from unam¬
biguous words, but would classify souls and arguments and go
on to show that such-and-such types of soul are influenced by
such-and-such arguments for such-and-such reasons. And this
theoretic knowledge must be supplemented by a discipline that
will enable the student to recognize instantly the type and apply
in practice the principles which he has learned. Is there any
easier way? Will it be enough to get up the opinions of mankind
and rely on the trick of the Sicilian method of Tisias, the sub¬
stitution of probabilities for facts? If a brave little man is
brought into court for assaulting a big coward, must neither
tell the truth, but must the one rely on the probabilities of the
case and the other affirm that there were several assailants and
so risk refutation ? But to waive this trivial instance, we have al¬
ready pointed out that in general the scientific manipulation of
resemblances and likelihoods depends ultimately on knowledge
of the truth. It is a long way, but there is no escape from the
method of Hippocrates — a labor which it is well worth while to
undertake in order to please our masters, the gods, but hardly
in order to curry favor with our fellow-slaves. So much for the
question of technique or art.

The larger question, whether it is more seemly to write or not
to write, reminds Socrates of the tale of the Egyptian Theuth,
who first invented letters and submitted his discovery to King
Thamous, who said: The inventor is not the best judge of the
use. Your invention is an aid not to memory but to suggestion
and prompting. It will produce the semblance, not the reality,
of knowledge, and your disciples, hearing of many things with-

269 D

270 A

270 C ff.

Lysis 214 B 5
Charm. 156 B ff

271 D

261 E, 263 A
Laws 962 D

271 E-272 A

272 C 1
262 C 2
Rep. 493

273 A 7

273 B

273 D

262 A

Polit. 278 B
Rep. 435 D

274 A
273 E

Phaedo 62 DIC,
69 DE

274 B

274 C
274 E

Rep. 601 DE

275 A

2o6

WHAT PLATO SAID

out real understanding, will be supposed to have many ideas
and being wise in their own conceit will be inconsiderate and
difficult to deal with.

375 B O Socrates, you lightly invent Egyptian or any other tales,
says the perhaps slightly piqued Phaedrus, and is rebuked for
paying more attention to the vehicle than to the substance of
the lesson, unlike the simple-minded ancients who were content
on Apoi. 34 d 5 to receive the word of truth “from a rock or a tree.” Socrates’ —
that is, Plato’s — point is that the written word cannot defend

275 d itself when misunderstood. The book maintains a solemn si¬

lence. The written word is at best an image of the living word

276 a that is inscribed together with knowledge in the disciple’s soul.

The flowers of literature are gardens of Adonis which the true
teacher cultivates in the hours of leisure which others give to
vi. 13 sport and drinking bouts. Such a teacher may treasure up his
writings, though written in water, as memorials against the ob-

276 d livion of old age or as aids to others who may follow in his foot¬

steps. But he will not take them seriously in comparison with
the words of real knowledge that his art of dialectic plants and
sows in fitting souls — thoughts capable of defending themselves
and containing within themselves the seeds of immortality by
succession and transmission to the disciples of his disciples.

277 a And so we are prepared to answer the questions with which

we began. Good writing is writing that is based on clear-cut
distinctions and divisions of thought, and that adapts different

277 bc styles to differing types of souls. It is disgraceful to write if you

suppose that writing can ever adequately embody and express

277 d the stability and the clarity of truth. It is honorable if you are

aware that all writing is a game and that none can be quite seri¬
ous in comparison with the dialectics of question and answer.

278 a The best writings are only reminders of the discourses that are
But cf. Symp^op ^he £rue children of the mind.

278 bc And so our final message to Lysias or to Homer or to any

statesman or orator is that if the writer knew the truth about
the things of which he spoke and was able to defend it and make
his writing seem a poor thing in contrast with his spoken word,
then he deserves a higher name than author, orator, or poet. To
call him wise would be to give him an appellation that belongs
378 d only to God. But we may fitly call him a lover of wisdom or

PHAEDRUS

207

philosopher. But he who cannot thus surpass what he has slow¬
ly and painfully composed, twisting his sentences this way and
that, gluing them together and adding and taking away, we
shall more properly denominate a poet or an author or a drawer-
up of decrees. And what message, Phaedrus asks, shall I take to
the fair Isocrates? Say that I think that he is far superior to
Lysias in talent, and of a nobler temper or temperament. If he
continues as he has begun, he may make all his rivals in that
kind look like children. And if he is not content with that, it
may be that some diviner impulse will lead him on to higher
things, for there is a tincture of philosophy in his nature. The
heat has abated, and before they depart Socrates addresses a
final prayer to Pan, which is one of the most notable things in
Plato:

Dear Pan and other gods who haunt this place, grant that I be beautiful
within and that what I have without may content what is within. May I think
wisdom wealth, and of gold give me so much as only the sober-minded could
bear or carry.

278 E

Supra, pp. 33-34

279 A

279 BC
Laws 817 A 5

REPUBLIC

327 a The first book of the Republic might have been for con¬
venience treated as the last of the minor or Socratic dialogues.
Socrates narrates to an unknown interlocutor that he went
down to the Peiraeus “yesterday” with Plato’s brother Glaucon
on Phaedo n8 a to witness the rites of the Thracian Artemis, Bendis, and pay his
devotions to the goddess. As they were turning their faces

327 c homeward, Polemarchus and Adeimantus, Plato’s second broth¬

er, held them up with friendly importunity and playful threats.
328 ab They must stay to dinner and see the festivals of the night.

There is to be the innovation of a torch race on horseback,
and there will be opportunity of a good talk with the lads. At

328 b the house of Polemarchus they find his brothers Euthydemus

and Lysias the orator, and the rhetor Thrasymachus of Chalce-
don and Charmantides of the deme of Paiania and Cleitophon.
The aged father of Polemarchus, Cephalus, has been sacrificing

328 c to the gods and sits crowned with garlands on a pile of cushions,

a companion picture to the beautiful boy Lysis in the Lysis
(106 E), and a prefiguring type of the happy old age reserved for
612-13 the just and righteous man at the conclusion of the whole work.
Like the worthy Lysimachus in the Laches (i 8 1 C), he greets
Socrates cordially and urges him to frequent his house and be a
328 de companion to his sons. Socrates likes to converse with the aged
who have gone ahead on a way on which we must all follow, and
he gives the conversation an edifying turn by asking Cephalus
330 d what is the chief benefit he has derived from his wealth. He is
Loebadioc. not one of the self made nouveaux riches who are such bad
329 a company because they will praise nothing but money. Cepha¬
lus does not share the common view of the deprivations of old

329 c age. It is rather a blessed release from the passions that agitate
329-30 youth. He admits that wealth may alleviate its discomforts.
332 b But the chief use of money is that it enables a man to keep all

his promises and to pay all his just debts to gods and men, and
depart in peace with no fear of those terrors of the unseen world

330 e at which he may have laughed before, but which now appal his

208

REPUBLIC

209

very dreams with dark surmise. Is this then justice? asks Socra¬
tes, to pay your debts and tell the truth? Or does the definition
need qualification? For surely it would not be just and right to
return a dagger to a madman merely because you owed it to
him.

The definition is faulty. “Not if we can trust the poet Si¬
monides, M Polemarchus interposes.

At the beginning of controversy Plato tactfully withdraws the
old man Cephalus who laughingly makes over the argument to
his “heir” Polemarchus on the plea that he himself must attend
to the sacrifices. Simonides, Polemarchus avers, defines justice
as rendering to each his due. Socrates, as is his wont, affects to
think it impossible that a wise and godly man should be mis¬
taken, but claims the right to interpret his ambiguous utterance.
The return of the weapon in the case supposed is no “due,” be¬
cause only good is due from friend to friend. But Polemarchus
declares that to an enemy is due that which befits him — evil.
The due then, Socrates infers, is an enigma for the befitting. As
medicine renders (due and befitting) drugs to bodies, and cook¬
ing (due and befitting) condiments to foods, so justice renders
(due and befitting) benefits and harms to friends and foes. This
commonplace of Greek popular morality is deeply repugnant to
Plato’s higher ethical feeling. It is satirized and refuted by a
further extension of the Socratic analogy between justice and
the arts. The demand for specification is first pushed home.
What is the specific “work” of justice as shoes are that of cob¬
bling? After several failures Polemarchus is reduced to affirm¬
ing that it is the keeping safe of money when out of use. Justice,
then, is useful for the useless — a not very worthy function. The
definition is thus refuted by the method so often employed in
the minor dialogues. Furthermore, in the arts capacity is two¬
fold: the physician can both heal and kill; the general can keep
his own counsel and “steal” a march on the enemy. By analogy
the best guardian of money is the ablest thief, and so Socrates
concludes with grave irony that the justice of Homer and Si¬
monides is an art of stealing — with the reservation that it is for
the benefit of friends and the injury of enemies.

This puzzles Polemarchus, who, however, reiterates that it is
just to help your friends and harm your enemies. But he assents

Laws 904 D
33i C

33i C

33i D

On Prot. 339 ff.

On Hipp. Min.
365 D

33i E

Hipp. Min. 365 B
332 A

332 B

On Charm. 162 A

332 D

Xen. Mem. IV. 2.
15

On Crito 49 A
333-34

On Apol. 25 B
On Ion 536 E
333 CD

333 DE

On Charm. 139 D

334 AB

On Hipp. Min.
376

Xen. Mem III. 1
6

334 B

210

WHAT PLATO SAID

cf. 361 ab to an amendment based on subtle distinctions between the seem-
xen.symp. 8. 43 ing and the real friend. It is just to benefit a real friend who is a
on crito 49 a good man. Socrates then rejects the entire notion of a good man
Ion 335 harming anybody by an application of the idea of function or
xen. Mem. iv. 2. specific work which plays a large part in the subsequent argu¬
ment. To harm anything is to impair its specific excellence and
fitness for its specific work — to make a dog a worse dog, a horse
a worse horse. But justice is the specific virtue of man. To harm
a man is to make him unjust, and this is plainly not the work of
a just man any more than it is the “work” of heat to chill or of
a horseman to spoil a horse. The just man, then, will harm no¬
body, and the definition as interpreted cannot be the intended
meaning of Simonides or any of the blessed wise men. It must
336 a be the saying of some tyrant — a Periander, a Perdiccas, a Xer¬
xes, or the Theban Ismenias priding himself on the power, as he
deems it, of ill-gotten gains. What, then, is the definition of
“justice”? A minor, tentative dialogue might close here.

336 b Thrasymachus is outraged by what he regards as sophistical
quibbling issuing in a conclusion repugnant to common sense
and universal practice. Unable to restrain himself longer, he
336 bc brutally interrupts with the demand that Socrates instead of
asking captious questions and evading with his accustomed
irony the expression of his own opinion shall declare explicitly
what justice is. No mere substitution of a synonym, the profit¬
able, the beneficial, the advantageous, will be accepted. Thra¬
ce 339 a*3 symachus demands a definition that shall explain the facts, and
onEuthyph. 6 cou\^ gjve Qne himself if he chose. After some demur and dra¬
matic byplay he propounds it. Justice is nothing else than the
338 c advantage of the superior — the stronger. By this formula, which
was probably current at Athens, Thrasymachus means that
justice has no existence apart from legal enactment, and that in
338 de all forms of government the politically stronger party legislates
to maintain its domination and in its own interest. The formula
expresses two distinct feelings: (i) The revolt of positive hard-
headed minds against sentimental or metaphysical definitions of
law and justice. Law, they say, is not the perfection of reason
or the distribution made by mind, or the voice of God. It is sim-
On Laws^722^E- pjy t]ie command of a political superior to a political inferior.

(2) But with this political positivism is often associated a

REPUBLIC

211

Machiavellian cynicism. And it is on this that Thrasymachus is
represented as dwelling with most complacency. Some critics
think this caricature. But the feeling that prompts him is shared
by men as diverse and as estimable as Montaigne and Grote.
His philosophy of life is that of Callicles in the Gorgias.

The part of a “man” is to “stand in” with, to stand well with,
the stronger party — to win by force or cunning the power to
gratify his appetites, help his friends, and harm his enemies; to
commit injustice if needs be, not to suffer it. This is the justice
of nature and the strong as opposed to the conventional justice
of the weakling and the slave. The supreme embodiment of this
ideal is the successful tyrant. The refutation of this doctrine is
the main theme of the Republic as of the Gorgias. But the seri¬
ous discussion of it begins only after its restatement in more
philosophical form at the opening of the second book. In the first
book Socrates plays with Thrasymachus as he does with Calli¬
cles in the Gorgias , using arguments that suffice to silence an
opponent but which carry real conviction only to those who ac¬
cept them as the shorthand or symbolic expression of deeper
truths. And first, to Thrasymachus’ infinite disgust, Socrates as
in the Gorgias affects to take the formula literally in order to
elicit a more precise explanation of the meaning. Thrasymachus
plainly does not mean that if much eating of beef is the ad¬
vantage of the stronger athlete it is therefore justice. This “mis¬
understanding” removed, Socrates again invokes the distinction
between the apparent and the real. The stronger are not in¬
fallible and may command what is really for their disadvantage.
There is a suggestion here of the sudden shift from the stand¬
point of common sense to that of the ideal with which Socrates
so often baffles and irritates his opponents. Common sense con¬
templates obvious worldly “goods,” the goods per se of the apos¬
tle of common sense, Aristotle, in respect to which the stronger
is not likely to err. But Socrates is hinting at the true interests
and “goods” of the soul. The argument, however, does not take
that turn. Nor does Thrasymachus accept the suggestion of
Cleitophon that he meant “justice is what the stronger supposes
to be for his advantage.” He resorts rather to the refinement
that the “superior” as such and ex vi termini cannot err, and
thereby delivers himself into Socrates’ hands. He has himself

Gorg. 483 ff.
Theaet. 167 C

Gorg. 510 A-D

344 A

494 C-499 C

338 CD
489 BC ff.

339 C

Theaet. 178 A
Cratyl. 429 B

340 B

340 D

212

WHAT PLATO SAID

341 ab
341 c ff.

Ion 540 B

342

342 E

Prot. 333 E
Gorg. 505 C ff.
343 AB ff.

343 B

343 C

Laches 180 B

343 E
344 AB

344 C

344 D

345 CD
345 D

346 CDE

shifted from the concrete to the abstract, from realism to ideal¬
ism. The superior is no longer the politically dominant, but the
intellectual, moral, or professional superior. And the old analogy
of the arts is again pertinent, and after an acrimonious dramatic
interlude is again applied. The craftsman as such may be called
infallible. But by parity of reasoning the craftsman as such, pi¬
lot or physician, is not a money-maker, but is a mere embodi¬
ment of the craft as such. And the craft and the ideal or ab¬
stract craftsman exist solely for the due performance of their
function. They have “as such” no personal interest or advan¬
tage or none except this of doing the work right. Their aim is
the advantage of the inferior whom they serve. Socrates estab¬
lishes this by inductions to which Thrasymachus yields reluc¬
tant assent until, foreseeing his defeat, he becomes abusive and
then launches into a long tirade in which he falls back to the
plane of the real, and positive politics. The shepherd fattens
the sheep not for their good but to eat them. Justice, to employ
another current formula, is the other fellow's good and the harm
of the innocents who practice it. The just man always gets the
worst of it in any private dealing. And if he holds office, he neg¬
lects his own affairs and offends his friends by his puritanism.
The honor men bestow upon the successful tyrant reveals their
real convictions. They censure injustice only from fear of suffer¬
ing it. In reality, injustice is the nobler and more advantageous
thing.

Having deluged their ears with this speech as a bathman emp¬
ties his bucket, Thrasymachus is about to depart. But Socrates
implores him to remain and determine a question so vital for the
whole conduct of life. He reminds him that he has abandoned
the notion of the shepherd “as such” and returned to the con¬
crete shepherd who is interested in prospective mutton. But the
generalization still holds that every ruler “as such,” whether in
politics or the crafts, consults the interest of the ruled. It fol¬
lows, though Thrasymachus thinks it an absurd paradox, that
the “true” ruler accepts the office of rule unwillingly and de¬
mands a wage. This becomes obvious in the arts if we abstract
the money-getting aspect of each art as something distinct from
its true aim and function. It will then appear that the craftsman
as such seeks the good of the inferior whom he serves, and re-

REPUBLIC

213

gards his own wage only in his distinct capacity of money-
getter. In the political art the motive that constrains the true
artist to serve is not so much the positive wage or meed of
honor as the penalty of being ruled by worse men if he does not.
And in a city of good men the competition would be not to hold
but to escape office.

Justice then is not the advantage of the stronger. But the
larger problem raised by Thrasymachus’ assertion that injustice
is better than justice remains. This thesis Socrates proposes to
debate dialectically rather than in set speeches pro and con.
Thrasymachus does not affirm that justice is vice — it is only
a most noble simplicity. But he will maintain that injustice is
virtue and wisdom and justice the contrary. Socrates is unable
to refute this paradox by the method employed against Polus in
the Gorgias. For Thrasymachus is too wary to admit that in¬
justice, though profitable, is disgraceful, thereby disjoining the
utile and the pulchrum , the turpe and the malum . Socrates is
therefore compelled to resort to dialectical subtleties which in¬
terest us chiefly as an illustration of the “game of question and
answer.” Thrasymachus is lured from the self-evident proposi¬
tion that a man is like what he is to the careless admission that
he is what he is like — i.e., that he who is like the good and wise
is good and wise. He also cheerfully concedes that the unjust
man tries to overreach and do better than, or get the better of,
both the just and the unjust — his like and his unlike; while the
just man seeks to get the better of only the unjust — his unlike.
But, recurring to the analogy of the arts, the craftsman, who in
respect of his art is the good and wise man, tries to do the same
as his like or fellow-craftsman, and only tries to outdo or do
differently from his unlike, the unskilled layman and bungler.
In this respect, then, the just man is like the artist or craftsman,
i.e., he is like the wise and good and therefore by the principle
already admitted he is the wise and good. Thrasymachus, who
has waxed very hot under this interrogation, ironically accepts
this conclusion. If he tried to explain himself, he says, Socrates
would accuse him of talking to the gallery. And after some de¬
mur Socrates goes on to confirm by another consideration the
inference that justice is also inherently “stronger” than injus¬
tice. There must be honor even among thieves. A community

347

347 c

On Laws 678 E

347 E

348 AB

On Hipp. Min.
373 A

348 C

348 E

349 A

Gorg. 474 ff.
Gorg. 482 D ff.
349 B-350 C

349 D

Prot. 331 DE

349 B ff.

On Gorg. 483 C

349 E

Ale. I. 125 A
Laches 194 D

350 BC
350 D

35i AB
35i C

214

WHAT PLATO SAID

of robbers can accomplish nothing unless they maintain some
sort of fair dealing among themselves. Thus, alike in the indi¬
vidual and the state, injustice is a principle of weakness and
352 ab dissension and justice a source of strength. By way of doxology
Socrates adds that the gods, being just, will love their likes.

He then recurs to the question whether the just man or the

352 d unjust has the happier life. It is already answered by implica¬

tion. But the ideas of function ( epyov ) and specific excellence

353 a (d perrj) provide another method of approach. The function of

a thing is the work which it alone can do or it can do best. Its
specific virtue is the quality essential to the right performance
of its function. The function of the soul is oversight, delibera¬
tion, counsel, ruling, living. The entire argument here, in Re¬
public X, and in Laws X, rests on the assumption which a mate-
Laws 892 b rialist would reject that the function of “soul” is not the vege¬
table or animal life but the spiritual (right) living. The virtue
of the soul Polemarchus had already been compelled to admit
is justice. Without justice, then, the soul cannot live well, i.e.,
on charm. 173 d fare well (e5 7 rparreu'), he., be happy. Thrasymachus, though
On Lysis 21 1 CD silenced, is not convinced. And Socrates compares their feast of

354 b (dialectical) reason to the dinner of gluttons who snatch quickly

354 c at every dish but rightly enjoy none. If he does not know what

justice is, how can he really know whether it is a virtue and
whether it makes its possessor happy or unhappy?

The first book is admirably adapted to the place of proem
on Laws 7i85cd assigned to it by Plato. It might conceivably stand alone as a
dramatic dialogue in the “earlier” manner. As Plato’s report of
a Socratic conversation about justice, it might take its place be¬
side the search for a definition of temperance in the Charmides ,
and of courage in the Laches . As a dialectical defense of justice
against injustice, it resembles in its reasoning the proof of the
superiority of the good to the merely pleasurable in the Gorgias.
A still closer parallel to the Gorgias could be obtained if, omit¬
ting the discussion of the state, we supplemented the dialectics
of the first book with the moral eloquence of the ninth and the
mythical conclusion of the tenth. But though we may amuse
ourselves with such comparisons, it is impossible to prove that
the first book was intended for separate publication. Diimmler’s

REPUBLIC 215

reconstruction of a Thrasymachus antedating the Gorgias re¬
mains an ingenious conjecture merely.

The second book opens with an impressive statement by
Glaucon and Adeimantus of the moral problem presented by the
doctrine which Thrasymachus holds in common with countless
others. Justice is a mere convention of the social contract de¬
vised when men discovered that the pains of suffering wrong
outbalance the pleasures of wrongdoing. Injustice is inherently
better for the strong, who can practice it with impunity. Justice
is weakness. Give the just man the ring of Gyges, the cap of in¬
visibility, and the greed which is inherent in human nature will
lead him in the path of the unjust. We estimate justice and in¬
justice now solely by the consequences which the fears and
hypocrisies of men attach to them. Let the just man be mis¬
understood and crucified. Let the unjust man (the height of
injustice) maintain a reputation for justice to the end. So we
shall learn which life is inherently preferable. The unjust man
can even buy off the gods by splendid offerings, sacrifice, and
prayer. And not only do immoralists reason thus, Adeimantus
adds. Conventional religion and morality, from Homer and
Hesiod down, rest on the same prudential calculation of conse¬
quences. Fathers commend honesty to their sons merely as the
best policy. Musaeus and Orpheus paint a material paradise.
The reward of virtue is to be an eternal drunk. And they also
tell us that wealth can purchase from heaven pardon for past
and indulgence for future crime. And poets and prose-writers
unite in declaring that virtue is honorable but painful, while
vice, though perhaps conventionally disgraceful, is surely pleas¬
ant. And they felicitate and praise successful wickedness, and
speak with ill-disguised contempt of the unhappiness and bad
luck of the virtuous. What inference will a clever youth draw
from all this? Will he not infer that the true way of happiness
for him is to practice injustice and evade the consequences by
cunning or force or by joining a gang? There are political clubs
that will protect him if he gets into trouble, and he can buy
out the law with his profits. If there are no gods or they are
careless of mankind, he need not concern himself with them.
Socrates has charmed Thrasymachus into silence. Let him con¬
vince such a youth as we suppose. Let him prove the intrinsic

Book II

358 c

On Euthyd. 279 B
On Crito 51-52

358 E-359 AB

359 BC.366 D

359 Cff.

On Laws 875 B 7

360 D-361 CD
361 E-362 A

362 BCD

362 E

363 AB

363 C

364 BCE

Cf. infra, pp. 397“
98

363 E ff.

364 AB

365 AB

Xen. Mem. IV. 4.
21-22

365 D

Theaet. 173 E 4
Thucyd. 8. 54

366 A
365 DE

On Euthyd. 290 A
358 B

21 6

WHAT PLATO SAID

367 E
580 C 6-7
427 D, 392 C

367 DE

584, B, C ff.
Gorg. 493 E-
494 C

Phileb. 42 C ff.

374 ff-
427 E ff.

444 C-445 B

368 C

On Laches 190 B

368 E ff.
Laws 829 A

and necessary superiority of justice, whether known or unknown
to gods and men. Conventional and prudential arguments we
may accept from others. From Socrates who has given his life
to these questions we expect something more.

This is the challenge. The remainder of the Republic is the
answer to it. Socrates’ thesis is finally established in the ninth
book by three distinct arguments: (1) The analogy between the
happiness of the just man and that of the ideal state, which in¬
volves the fundamental Platonic conception that justice is the
health or right order and true polity of the soul. The entire dis¬
cussion of the state in Books II— VIII is expressly subordinated
to this result. (2) The preference of the virtuous wise man for
the just life proves its preferability. For he alone has had ex¬
perience both of higher and lower pleasures. (3) The lower and
more sensuous forms of pleasure for the sake of which men com¬
mit injustice are not truly pleasurable, being mixed with and
preconditioned by pain. In the Gorgias by implication and in
the Philebus explicitly, this proposition is made the psycho¬
logical or metaphysical basis of the Platonic ethics.

From another point of view the Republic may be more simply
divided as follows:

Book I: Introduction.

Books II— IV : The development of an ideal out of a typical or “natural”
city, by the specialization of function and a reformed education of the military
and ruling class; the definitions of the cardinal virtues in terms of the three
faculties of the soul corresponding to the three classes of the population, and
the conception of justice and happiness as the health and right order of the
individual or the social organism.

Books V-VII : The completion of the ideal state by the rule of the philoso¬
phers and the higher philosophic education required for the apprehension of
the idea of good.

Books VIII-IX: Survey of degenerate and inferior types of city and man,
leading up to the portrait of the unhappiness of the tyrant and the conclusion
of the argument.

Book X, Supplement: (i) Confirmation of the banishment of the poets by
psychological considerations; (2) the myth of immortality.

In order to decide whether the just man is happy, we must
know what justice is. The idea and similitude of justice is the
same in the individual and the social organism. But in the state,
justice is writ large so that we may read it more readily. Soc-

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217

rates therefore proposes to observe the growth of a typical city
in order to discover in it justice (and injustice). There is of
course a distinction between a typical natural city that shall
merely exemplify ethical ideas on a large scale and an ideal
state that shall be an embodiment of justice. The approxima¬
tion to the ideal is made through seemingly irregular steps.
Plato purposely complicates his argument by beginning with the
indispensable minimum of a city, a simple rustic community
answering to the ideal of the Cynics or Rousseau, which he half-
wistfully, half-seriously pronounces the true city. This is trans¬
formed into a normal Greek city, owing to Glaucon’s scorn for
what he styles a city of acorn-eating “pigs,” and Socrates’ recog¬
nition that a fully developed sophisticated society is a better
sociological laboratory. This “luxurious” or “inflamed” city is
in turn “purified” by the principle of the specialization of func¬
tion and the reform of education. It pleased Plato to unfold his
design in this order, and we may ignore as impertinent Aris¬
totle’s captious criticism of the minimum city and modern hy¬
potheses as to the composition of the Republic based on alleged
inconsistencies.

The origin of society is the helplessness of solitary man.
The principle of the division of labor is represented as adding
to the farmer the builder, the purveyor of clothes, toolwrights,
cowherds, and other assistants, and traders and merchants. The
gradual increase of wants and the admission of luxury at Glau-
con’s demand still further enlarge and differentiate the popula¬
tion of workingmen, until by a process which Herbert Spen¬
cer calls “the multiplication of effects” the original hamlet de¬
velops under our eyes into a normal Greek city.

The principle of the division of labor casually introduced has
far-reaching consequences and proves to be one of the dominant
thoughts of the entire work. War is not banished from Plato's
utopia. It is an inevitable accompaniment of the struggle (for
land) that arises when the simple life of the “necessary" state is
once abandoned. The principle of division of labor requires that
the tools should be made by toolwrights and that soldiering
should be treated as a specialty. The all-important function of
the soldiers, then, demands a peculiar endowment and a special
training. The “guardians” must be high-spirited and fierce to

369 E

372 C ff.

372 E

369 B
370-71

373 BC

373 DE

374 CD ff.

375 B

218

WHAT PLATO SAID

Xen. Mem. II. 7.

14

Oecon XV. 4

376 E

375-76
376 E ff.

377 D

378 A
379

Laws 800 B

379 A-C
381 E ff.

380 D ff.

Book m. 386 AB

392 AB

enemies yet gentle to friends. These are the qualities of a good
watchdog. And your dog is also in a sense a philosopher or lover
of wisdom — a quality essential to a guardian. Fie actually barks
at those he does not know in order to show his hatred of igno¬
rance.

This training of the soldier class is made the occasion of what
Rousseau calls “the best treatise on education in the world.”
Education is considered under two heads: the training of the
mind and heart, or music, and the training of the body, or gym¬
nastic. Both are in reality chiefly concerned with the soul. The
problem of the educator is to combine the two in just measure,
avoiding the opposite extremes of effeminacy and irritability, on
the one hand, of brutality and stolidity, on the other. Under
“Music” Plato treats first of the problem which now occupies
our “kindergartners,” the moral and the emotional effect of the
stories we so recklessly tell our children. He dwells on this the
more because thoughtful Greeks had during the preceding cen¬
tury been waking up to the blasphemous immorality of their
traditional anthropomorphic mythology. Such tales as Homer
and Hesiod tell about the gods must not be told to our alumni,
says Socrates; and in pursuance of his criticism he lays down
three canons of sound theology: (i) that God (the gods) is the
author of good only, (2) that God never deceives, (3) that he
never changes. Poetical and popular pictures of the terrors of
the future world are also deprecated — as engendering an un-
philosophical fear of death that is least of all suitable to a sol¬
dier. And the censure is extended to other immoral and unedify¬
ing passages in Homer descriptive of the conduct of heroes and
demigods of old. But, Plato ingeniously adds, we cannot yet
proscribe the teaching by poetry that the unjust may be happier
than the just — for that would beg the question of our entire
argument.

The detail of Plato’s censure of Flomer has lost much of its
interest for us, and may seem to occupy a disproportionate
space in the economy of the Republic . Its historic significance is
very great. It is the chief source of the polemic of the Greek
Christian Fathers against the pagan mythology. And if not the
origin, it is the chief field of exercise of the allegorical interpreta¬
tion of literature in antiquity. Allegory was invoked in defense

REPUBLIC

219

of Homer against Plato’s criticism. Since, in the words of Hera-
cleides, Homer was impious if he did not allegorize, he must
have allegorized. But Plato anticipates this evasion: The young
cannot distinguish the allegorical from the literal interpretation, 378 d
and the first impressions on their plastic minds will be indelible.

But in quest of true principles of education Plato examines 392 cff.
not merely the material content of the poet’s teaching but its
form and spirit. In a discussion from which Aristotle’s Poetics
borrows much, he distinguishes the equable flow of epic narra- 392-93
tive from the more vivid imitative speeches which are the source
of the mimetic art of Attic tragedy, mimetic in the narrower
sense of the word. All art is of course, broadly speaking, mimet¬
ic in that it expresses character and feeling, and imitation of
aught but the good is dangerous to the stability and unity of the 394 d
soul. This raises the whole question of the admission of tragedy Laws 669 cd
and comedy and of realistic art generally into our state, and 396 b
perhaps still further problems. We follow whither the wind of
argument blows. By the principle of division of labor it is im- 394 de
possible to imitate, still more to practice, diverse and incom- ||5A ^ D
patible things. Knowledge we must have of madmen even, but
to imitate them is dangerous. As we shall later see, we are as¬
similated to what we take pleasure in. There is no place for the 398 a
many-sided versatile man in the true state, and if a poet of this
type comes to us, we will marvel at him and admire him, but
crown him with fillets and pour ointment on his head and send
him away to another city. Plato, anticipating the thought of 398 a.
Wordsworth and Ruskin, argues that the music we hear, the
tone, temper, and rhythm of the poetry we read, the aesthetic
quality of the statutes, the pictures, the architecture we con¬
template in our daily walk, the aspects of nature that surround
our impressionable years, all tend to mold and fashion by silent
sympathy our inner spiritual life through the sensuous organ¬
ism. The true statesman and educator will demand that the
silent, daily, cumulative irresistible pressures of these subtle
forces shall conspire for good rather than for evil. Then and
only then, as Socrates beautifully says, “will our youth dwell 4oicd
in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the
good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall
flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer

220

WHAT PLATO SAID

region and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into like¬
ness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.” The detailed
398 c and technical application of these principles to the modes of
400 e Greek music and the faint beginnings of a science of Greek
metres need not be considered here.

403 d It is not the body that determines the quality of the soul, but
on charm. 156 e the soul that fashions the body. In gymnastics Plato, like other

thoughtful Greeks, disapproves of the heavy habit of the pro-

404 b fessional athlete and prefers a more flexible and simple regimen

for the training of soldiers who are athletes in the greatest of
403 e contests. Even Homer may be cited to confirm the advantages
404 b of the simple life. Complexity and luxury give prominence to

405 a medicine and law, the signs of a defective education. Well-bred
405 b freemen should not need to import their justice from without,

nor should they require the physician except for surgery and
prompt treatment of acute diseases. A real workman has no lei-

406 d sure to be sick. Modern valetudinarianism with its headaches

and its flatulences is incompatible with the duties of a citizen or
407 b the serious pursuit of knowledge. It was unknown to Homer,
406 ab who prescribes no diet when once the wound has been dressed,
on Prot. 316 d This coddling of disease was invented by Herodicus for the tor-
Ar. Rhet. 1361 b ment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors.

The proportion of truth and exaggeration in Plato's satire hard¬
ly needs to be pointed out to readers endowed with a sense of
humor. Macaulay’s solemn contrast between Baconian benevo¬
lence and Platonic ruthlessness is beside the mark. Plato, as we
shall see elsewhere, derives many ideas of scientific procedure
on charm. 156 e from the medical science of his day. In the Timaeus he does
full justice to the value of diet and of expectant and alleviat¬
ing medicine. Here his literary and ethical purpose is differ-
408-9 ent. Recurring to the analogy between medicine and justice,
Socrates points out that while a physician is the better for much
409 a experience of disease even in his own person, the best judge is
one who, innocent and naive in youth, attains only late to the
409 cd knowledge of evil. A precocious knowledge of the world hurts
the smart, suspicious man, and Plato holds with Burke that
“they who raise suspicions on the good on account of the be¬
havior of ill men are of the party of the latter.” A nicely ad-
410 d ff. justed education is required to maintain the true mean of refine-

REPUBLIC

221

ment and strength, between the extremes of effeminacy or “mi-
sology” that result from an exclusive devotion to either music or
gymnastic.

Our state can be preserved only by the presence of perpetual
overseers or superintendents, who must have the same concep¬
tion of it as the founders. But the principles having been estab¬
lished, we need not legislate for details. The rulers will be the
elder guardians whose capacity to guard the principles of their
education and their devotion to the state must first have been
tested as by fire in both pleasure and pain. They will be the
guardians proper, and the rest of the soldiers may henceforth be
called helpers and allies. Even in the ideal state Plato, in Emer¬
son’s words, plays Providence with the vulgar. The acceptance
of Greek mythology proves, he thinks, that mankind will believe
anything that they are taught. Let us tell the guardians and
helpers, then, a profitable tale. Their early life and education
was all a dream. They were really bred in a subterranean cav¬
ern, sons of the motherland whom it is their duty to defend.
God mingled gold in the composition of the rulers, silver in the
helpers, iron and copper in the farmers and craftsmen. The
classes will generally breed true. But not always. The safety of
the state depends on assigning every man in whatever class born
to the function designated by his metal. Let there be an oracle
that the state will perish when a man of bronze guards it. The
allegory which Huxley thinks still valid for today hardly needs
exposition. The guardians and their helpers will establish the
soldiers’ “lairs” at some suitable point of vantage in the city.
They will receive for this service a modest stipend from the citi¬
zens. They will eat at common tables and hold all things in com¬
mon, and we will tell them that it is not lawful for them to con¬
taminate, by the possession of the earthly gold for which so
many unholy deeds have been done, the divine gold in their
composition. Declining from this austere rule and seeking pri¬
vate advantage, they will become tyrants instead of helpers, and
so, hating and hated, plotting and plotted against, will destroy
the state which we have fashioned.

The objection that the rulers are not happy Socrates meets,
first, by a hint of a higher conception of happiness than the
popular estimate, and, second, by the statement that the aim of

411 D

412 AB

412 BC

412 DE
414 B

414 CD

414 D

On Menex. 237 B
Tim. 40 B 8

415 AB

415 BC

415 E

416-17

Laws 697 D 6

Book IV

222

WHAT PLATO SAID

420 D

421 C
420 C

Hipp. Maj. 290 B

420 E
Laws 807 A
Polit. 272 C
Laws 919 B

421 D

422 AB

422-23

423 B

424 A

Cf. 416 D
On Lysis 207 C

424 B
424 DE

425 B-E

On Laws 769 D

425 B
425 E

426 E

427 B

427 D
On Laws 759 C

427 E

On Laws 631 CD

On Theaet. 193 B
428

429 BC
Laches 195 A
Prot. 350 C 3

430 BC
430 C 3

On Phaedo 82 AB

our polity is not to “attach” to the guardians a happiness in¬
compatible with their duties, but the right performance of their
functions by all, and so much happiness for each as is compatible
with that. An artist does not paint the eyes of his statue purple
because that is the most beautiful color. We might dream of a
workman’s Elysium and clothe the laborer in purple and fine
linen. But we know that wealth and poverty alike are corrupt¬
ers of good work. The objection that our city will lack the
sinews of war in conflict with other states is answered by point¬
ing to the training of its soldiers and the unity of its population.
Other cities are divided against themselves. Each is two at the
least, a city of the rich and of the poor. Ours is a unity. The
maintenance of this unity must be the limit to the city’s growth
in size. Its salvation, Socrates reiterates, will depend upon the
preservation of its system of education and its institutions, in¬
cluding the obvious principle that wives and children must be
the proverbial common goods of friends. Rightly started, the
growth of such a state moves in a circle. The good breeding and
education of one generation make them better parents of the
next. Especial care must be taken to avoid those innovations in
“music” that insensibly draw after them a revolution in the
feelings and habits of the people. Assuming these principles, we
may omit further legislation in detail. If these are corrupted,
the multiplication of laws will be vain. Existing states resemble
valetudinarians who implore the physician’s aid but will not
alter their bad habits. And remedial legislation is merely the
cutting-off of the Hydra’s heads by politicians who think them¬
selves statesmen because the people tell them that they are.
The organization of religion Plato discreetly leaves to Apollo.

And now the state being completed, we proceed to look for
justice. Socrates assumes that the state is “good” and that
goodness implies the four cardinal virtues. If we find the other
three, justice will be the remainder. Wisdom is plainly the vir¬
tue of good counsel residing in the rulers. Bravery may be de¬
fined as the conservation under all stress of temptation by pleas¬
ure or pain of the opinions inculcated by the rulers as to what
things are or are not really terrible. It is embodied in the war¬
rior class and may be called political or civic bravery to distin¬
guish it from higher philosophic insight, on the one hand, and

REPUBLIC

223

mere temperamental or animal fearlessness, on the other. Tem¬
perance (as we have seen in the Charmides ) is more puzzling, on charm. 159 b
It is a kind of harmony, symphony, or right order in the soul 430 e
described by the paradoxical expression “self-mastery” or “self-
control.” This implies a higher self dominating the lower — even
as the nobler class rules the lower in our state. Though specially Laws 63 9 B
manifested in the orderliness of the masses, it is not the virtue 431c
of a class but the unanimity and concord that maintains the
harmony of all three classes in respect of the seat of authority
both in the individual soul and in the state. Justice too, after a 431-32
little dramatic delay at the crisis of the action, is seen to be a 432 bh.
universal principle pervading the life of all classes. It is a form 433 ab
of the division of labor or doing one's own business, with which
we began. Economic specialization and division of labor, how- on cuarm. 161 e
ever helpful, are relatively insignificant compared with the
minding of its own business by each of the three fundamental
classes in the state. That the rulers should rule wisely, the sol- 433-34
diers defend bravely, and the craftsmen labor faithfully in their
vocation, this is essentially justice as writ large in the state.

But the definition if valid must also fit the individual man. 434 d
We must prove the actual existence in the soul of three faculties
corresponding to the classes in the state in terms of which our
definition is expressed. Strictly speaking, this would require “a
longer way" and a more exact method. But we can prove it 43s n
sufficiently for the present purpose. It is obvious in general that 435 e b.
the characteristics of nations and communities are derived from
the like qualities in their individual members. If Athens is clev¬
er, Thrace brave, and Phoenicia avaricious, it is because individ¬
ual Athenians, Thracians, and Phoenicians possess these quali¬
ties. The difficulty begins with the question whether knowledge, 436 a
high spirit, and appetite are separate faculties or merely differing
functions of the whole soul. To determine this nice psycho¬
logical controversy sufficiently for his ethical purpose Plato
enters into details of logic highly significant for his own time
but of mainly historical interest for us. Against sophistic con- 436C-437A
tradiction-mongers he first establishes the principle of contradic¬
tion. No thing can be, do, or suffer opposites at the same time, 437 a
in the same respect, and the same relation. Now desire and re- 437 bc
pulsion, willing and rejecting, are contrary movements in the

WHAT PLATO SAID

224

437 do. soul. The thirsty soul as such merely desires drink, not good
drink or drink qualified in any way. Qualification of the object
would correspond only to some qualification in the subject of
438 ab the desire. The qualifications need not be identical. But if one

438 d term of the relation is left unqualified, the other is so also. The

439 b thirsty soul then wills and moves toward one thing — drink. If

it (if King David or Sir Philip Sidney) does not drink, the prin¬
ciple that checks and pulls it back must be distinct from that
which thrusts it on as a brute to the gratification of desire.
Heraclitus epigrammatically says that the hands both push and
draw the bow. But in fact one hand pushes and the other pulls.
439 d We may then fairly distinguish in the soul the unreasoning ap¬
petite from the calculating reason. The separateness of the spir-

439- 40 it or thumos Plato establishes more lightly. It is not identical

with appetite, for we are often angry with our baser appetites.
And in the conflict of reason and appetite, spirit normally, and
unless perverted, takes the part of the reason. A man who
knows that he is in the wrong finds it difficult to be angry. But
440 bc injustice arouses unquenchable wrath in a high-spirited soul.

440- 41 Again the distinctness of thumos from the reason is manifest in

the countless instances, from Homer down, in which reason re¬
bukes feeling as a subject. The existence in the soul of the three
44t c classes is sufficiently proved for our purpose, and the virtues
may be defined in terms of their relations in the individual as

443 cd they were in the state. Justice is the performance of its own
On charm.^E, funct}on by each faculty of the soul — the reason ruling, the dis-

444 ab ciplined emotions assisting, the appetites obeying. Injustice is

the faction and disorder that results from the reversal of this

442 e principle. This subjective definition will endure all vulgar ob-
on Phaedo 78 b jective tests. The man who is just in this inner and spiritual

sense is not likely to steal or defraud, or betray or perjure him¬
self for gain, or commit adultery.

443 b Our dream is realized and the principle that each should at¬

tend to his own business has received its higher interpretation.
443 cd Justice, then, is the harmony and health of the soul and injus-
44s ab tice is disease and discord. The question with which we began is
Gorg. 505 ab answered. For if life is not worth living with a sick body, how
512 a, crUo^47 much iess with a diseased soul. Nevertheless, having reached

445 bc this height of speculation, Socrates proposes to review the de-

REPUBLIC

225

generate types of state and man in order to compare their un¬
happiness with the happiness of the just man and the ideal
state. The comparison is worked out with a wealth of interest¬
ing detail in the eighth book and the first part of the ninth, and
is the basis of the formal argument already considered. Books
V, VI, and VII are called a digression. But they are, as we shall
see, the keystone of the arch in the completed structure, and
there is not the slightest reason for supposing that they were
inserted in their present place by an afterthought.

The fourth book, though it yields a provisional answer to the
original question, does not meet all the difficulties of the minor
dialogues or complete the conception of an ideal state. Nothing
is said of the “good” and little of the political or royal art, the
two ideals or regulative ideas to which all problems of ethics and
politics are finally relegated in the tentative dialogues. And no
provision has been made for the continuance of the intelligent
direction and supervision which Socrates pronounces indispen¬
sable for the preservation of his city. The guardians and assist¬
ants have received a purified form of the normal Greek educa¬
tion in music and gymnastics. They have not been taught the
political art which will enable them, unlike the empiric states¬
men of Athens, to train up successors. They do not know the
idea of good, the focus of all relative and partial ethical and po¬
litical ideas, the scope and aim of all human endeavor, the unity
in which the diversity of the virtues, as defined psychologically,
finds explanation and significance. The wanton city has been
purified. The typical city has drawn nearer to the ideal. It does
not fully express it.

Glaucon and Adeimantus insist on a fuller explanation of the
lightly dropped paradox that the wives and children of the
guardians shall be the proverbial common goods of friends.
And Socrates after some demur and deprecation of ridicule ex¬
pounds in detail: (1) the doctrine that women have the same
capacities as men though usually in lesser degree, and that the
wives of the guardians should therefore share their education
and occupations; (2) an ingenious system of communistic mar¬
riage confined to the guardians, destined to secure (a) the im¬
provement of the human breed, (b) the immunity of the women
from petty cares, ( c ) complete unity and harmony of feeling in

On Laws 693 D

Cf. supra, pp. 71 ff.

On Euthyd. 291 B
Meno 100 A

Laws 963-64

Book V
449

Cf. 424 A

451 E-457

458 E-466

459 AB

460 D
462-65

226

WHAT PLATO SAID

the state or at least in the dominant class. These ideas are play-
457 b fully described as two great waves of paradox, and each is dis¬
cussed from the point of view (1) of feasibility and (2) of desira¬
bility. The question of feasibility, however, tends to be con-
473 c founded with the “third wave,” the larger problem of the
possibility of realizing the ideal state, and is in the end virtually
identified with it, when, as Socrates is describing some details of
469 Bff. the military life of the guardians, and setting forth the princi¬
ples of international law that should regulate wars between
Greeks, Adeimantus challenges him to prove the possibility of

471 c such a state, assuming the desirability to be conceded. To this

demand Socrates first replies with a plea for ideals as types and

472 d patterns in art and political science irrespective of the likelihood

of their complete realization. And then with much affected de-

473 c mur he advances to meet the third wave of paradox, the famous

proposition that either philosophers must become kings or kings
473 d philosophers, if a true city is ever to exist in the world of fact.

The next two books and a half may be taken as a commentary
on this sentence. What do we mean by philosophers and what
is the higher education that will develop their native powers and
475 fit them for the function of guardians of the state? Philosophers
475 c-d are lovers of wisdom — of true wisdom — not of curious sights and
sounds. By true wisdom Plato means thought, abstract ideas,
general conceptions — a systematic and coherent philosophy of
life such as can be achieved only through the severest discipline
of the higher mental faculties. All this is expressed in the ter¬
minology of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Universals, ideas,
notions, are treated as things, hypostatized entities. They be¬
long to the world of true being and unchanging reality. The par¬
ticulars of sense which the world thinks so real are imperfect
copies of the idea and hold a place midway between true being
and absolute non-being or nothing. This metaphysical doctrine
See Index has been and will be discussed elsewhere. The ethical and po¬
litical thought of the Republic is practically independent of it, and
can be interpreted without error if we everywhere substitute for
Platonic idea, for absolute being and the like, the equivalents,
clearly defined concept, principle, rule, type, norm, ideal, etc.
Plato means that though superficial cleverness may make a suc¬
cessful politician, the power of severe and consecutive abstract

REPUBLIC

227

thought is required to deal with the problems of philosophic
statesmanship. The philosopher-kings must be born with this
capacity, and the education in music and gymnastics must in
their case be supplemented by a higher education in abstract
science and dialectic destined to develop it. Plato assumes that
the power to apprehend abstractions is the natural outgrowth of
general intellectual superiority, and that it normally is accom¬
panied by and develops the noblest moral qualities. He fully
recognizes the necessity of supplementing it by practical experi¬
ence. But it was natural that he should chiefly emphasize what
was newest and to his own age most paradoxical in his doctrine
— the idea that politics, “sociology,” government, the most
complex of the sciences, demands in its adepts the highest de¬
velopment of the powers of abstract reasoning. Socrates, with
a half-playful employment of metaphysical language, explains
to Glaucon his distinction between lovers of wisdom and lovers
of sights and sounds. Knowledge is of being; ignorance of not-
being. If there is any tiling between being and not-being, we
may assign it to the faculty intermediate between knowledge
and ignorance. Faculties can be distinguished only by their
functions and objects. Knowledge and opinion are obviously
distinct, since one is infallible and the other fallible. Being is the
object of knowledge. What is the object of opinion ? Plainly the
things of sense which are continually changing and never retain
the same predicates — they are and are not. They are midway
between being and not-being, as opinion is midway between
knowledge and ignorance. The opinions of the many about the
beautiful and the base or ugly in this respect resemble things of
sense, and not the fixed ideas of reason. The lovers of sights and
sounds, then, and of the equally mutable popular beliefs must
not be angry if we distinguish them as lovers of opinion from the
philosophers or lovers of wisdom.

The philosophers having been thus defined, it is obvious that
government should be intrusted not to blind leaders of the
blind, but to those who alone possess ideals and clearly appre¬
hended aims. It remains only to insure that men of this type
shall not be lacking in practical experience. Socrates proceeds to
enumerate the virtues of the philosopher or of the ideal student
which he complacently deduces from their ruling passion — the

476

476-77
477 AB

477 C ff.

On Meno. 98 AB
Tim. 51 D

478 E

Hipp. Maj. 2S9 D
479 D

480

Book VI

484
484 C

Phaedo 79 C
484 D
539 E
485-86
503 CD

Theaet. 144 AB
Laws 709 E

228

WHAT PLATO SAID

485 c

486 A
Theaet. 174 E

Laws 709 A

On Laws 727 D

487 B

357 B

Hipparch. 232 B
487 C

Theaet. 173 C ff.

488

488 E

Polit. 299 B
On Phaedo 70 C
489 DE

489 BC

490 BCD

491 B
Cf . 496 B
Phaedo 69 C
On Laws 697 B

491 C
491 DE

495 B
Supra, p. 15
492 A ff.
On Meno 93-94

493 A

On Meno 99 E

492 D
Laws 696 A

493 ABC

493 C

494 A
Cf. 503 B
On Laws 655 E

494 BC
Ale. I. 104 BC

love of knowledge and truth: “Do you think that a mind habit¬
uated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation of all time
and all existence can deem this life of man a matter of great con¬
cern or think death a terrible thing?” But Adeimantus objects
that though he is unable to refute the successive inferences of
Socrates' dialectic, he is, like others in such case, silenced but
not convinced. It is a game of draughts in which Socrates is
master. Everybody knows that as a matter of experience the
philosophers or scholars in politics cut a sorry figure. They are
cranks, not to say rascals, at the worst and useless to the state
at the best. Socrates meets the objection by a parable. Old De¬
mos the shipmaster has an unruly crew whose factions acclaim
as the true pilot the man who is cunning to get control of the
helm and turn the ship over to them. The real pilot whose whole
study is on the art of navigation they count useless. He has no
skill to seize the helm — he only knows how to steer the ship. It
is not his business to beg them to be ruled but theirs to ask him
to rule. The epigram that the wise go to the doors of the rich
is a lie. Rich and poor when sick must go to the door of the
physician.

The “uselessness” of the better sort is explained. It remains
to show how inevitable is the corruption of the majority. The
philosophic nature, Socrates repeats, is compact of many noble
qualities. It is a rare product. And its very virtues, not to
speak of lesser “goods” that may accompany it, as wealth, high
birth, and beauty, put temptation in its way. Corruptio optimi
pessima is a universal law. A weak nature is ineffective for good
or ill. It is not the “Sophists” who corrupt young men to any
extent worth mentioning. The loud-voiced judgments of the
multitude in dicastery, assembly, and theatre are the chief cor¬
rupters of ingenuous and high-spirited youth, and only special
grace can save the young philosopher from their irresistible edu¬
cational and molding force. The Sophists merely teach as “poli¬
tics” or “virtue” the opinions and preferences of “the big beast”
the public, and call the necessary the just. The multitude is in¬
capable of philosophy. And the philosopher is inevitably dis¬
paraged by them and by those who cater to their whims and
seek to curry favor with them. They flatter the brilliant youth
of the philosopher and fawn upon his promise of power, filling

REPUBLIC

229

him with inordinate expectations and windy conceit so that he
cannot listen to the still small voice of chastening admonition
which warns him that he must toil like a slave to acquire the
sense which he lacks. And if haply any (Alcibiades?) incline his
ear, they are ready to tear the monitor (Socrates?) to pieces.

Thus philosophy, abandoned by her true wooers, is constrained
to wed contemptible weaklings — little bald tinkers who seek a
refuge from the mechanical arts in the dignity and honor that
attach to her name even in her low estate. A remnant remains
preserved by grace divine or happy accident or even ill health,
“the bridle of Theages.” Under present conditions they can do
little except keep their own souls unspotted from the world:
“For all these reasons, I say, the philosopher remains quiet,
minds his own affair, and, as it were, standing aside under shel¬
ter of a wall in a storm and blast of dust and sleet, and seeing
others fulfilled of lawlessness, is content if in any way he may
keep himself free from iniquity and unholy deeds through this
life and take his departure with fair hope, serene and well con¬
tent when the end comes.” But in an ideal state their true na¬
ture would manifest itself. Such a state, supposing it to be the
one we have described, must contain a permanent embodiment
of its constitutive principles. It must pursue philosophy, but
not in the premature and intermittent fashion of our young men.
Proper training of the body must precede the severest exercises
of the mind. And exclusive devotion to philosophy must be the
reward and crown of a life spent in the military and political
service of the state. Only when such men rule can the true city
exist among Greeks or barbarians, now or at any time in the
immeasurable past or future. Thrasymachus and others may
scorn our enthusiasm, but we will not desist until we either per¬
suade them or instil something in their souls that will profit
them when, born again, they meet with such discourses as these.
The people will not be jealous of the true philosopher, for his
nature is uplifted above jealousy and petty strife and gossip,
and assimilated to the eternal order which he contemplates. His
eye is fixed on the heavenly patterns which he will strive to re¬
produce in the plastic material of life, thus delineating the true
image of man which Homer tells us is the likeness of god. His
reign on earth is a dream, but not altogether an impossibili-

494 D

Ale. I. 135 E

494 E

495 CD

Theaet. 173 C 7

495 E

496 B

Phaedo 69 CD

496 DE

Cf. 331 A

497 A

497 C

497 D
412 A
502 D

On Laws 632 C

497 E-498 A

498 BC

On Prot. 326 BC
Cf. 540 AB

499 CD
498 CD

On Laws 676 AB

500 AB

500 C
Cf. 486 A

500 D ff.

On Cratyl. 389 C

501 BC

Cf. 589 D 1
On Theaet. 176 B

230

WHAT PLATO SAID

On 472 C-E
502 AB

Laws 709 E
502 D

503 BC
375 C
On Theaet. 144
AB

5°3 E
412 Eff.

504 B

435 D
Phaedr. 274 A 2

505 A
Infra, p. 455

ty. The principles that we have accepted may commend them¬
selves to others. Their acceptance by one monarch and his obe¬
dient subjects would be sufficient.

Meanwhile our task is to describe the education that will train
such philosophic rulers. Assuming that they unite the seemingly
incompatible qualities of the steadfast and the quick tempera¬
ments, we must add to the tests already imposed the discipline
of the severest studies. The looser methods which we em¬
ployed in defining the virtues in relation to the three faculties of
the soul will not suffice for them. We said then that there was
a longer way, and by this longer way they must proceed if they
are to attain a higher knowledge than that of the virtues as we
defined them — the highest knowledge of all — the idea of good.

As I have elsewhere shown, the plain meaning of this is that
some ultimate and consistent conception of “good” is the pre¬
supposition of any “science,” of ethics, politics, or sociology. In
practice it is enough for the ordinary man to be “good” and to
possess a working formula or definition of the virtues. But a
philosopher must give a reason why it is “good” or desirable to
be brave, chaste, etc. Such a reason rests ultimately on some
final conception of the su7n?num bonum — as pleasure, the de¬
velopment of character, utility, the realization of the will of
God, or the survival of the fittest. Plato’s doctrine of the idea
of good, then, is the affirmation that a philosophic statesman
must (1) possess such a conception; (2) be able to prove, define,
and defend it against all assailants; and (3) systematically and
consistently deduce from it all his ethical teaching and political
practice.

To ask what, then, is the idea of good, or to complain that
Plato never tells us what it is, is to misconceive his meaning al¬
together. Like other ideas it is hypostatized, and sometimes
described in the language of poetry and mysticism. But on that
score we might equally ask: JVhat> then, is the idea of beauty,
or the idea of a bed? The idea of good is not primarily a sub¬
stantive idea at all, but a regulative ideal for the constitution of
ethics, politics, and social science. If we insist on a further con¬
crete content, we shall find it only in the social, political, and
ethical ideals of the Republic and Laws as a whole — a Dorian
and Pythagorean ideal of order, harmony, discipline, and re-

REPUBLIC

231

straint opposed to the laxity of the Athenian democracy. It is
frequently said that the idea of good is identical with the Deity.

Goodness is the most conspicuous attribute of God. The sun is
a symbol of the godhead as well as of the good. The beauty and
order of the cosmos are manifestations of God’s goodness work¬
ing through benevolent design upon the intractable matter of
chaos. God and the good, then, are associated ideas that may
seem to be identified in the language of poetry and mystic devo¬
tion. But the statement that the idea of good is God is mean¬
ingless.

That nothing that we do or know is any good without the 505 a
good, Glaucon has “often heard,” though he is now inclined to OnCrito46B
feign ignorance in order to draw Socrates out. The multitude 50s b
affirm that the good is pleasure, the finer spirits that it is intelli¬
gence. But the one are compelled to admit that there are bad s»sc
pleasures; the other are unable to say what knowledge. They
can only repeat that it is knowledge of the good. Thus the sub¬
ject is full of perplexity. Yet no one can be a suitable guardian 505 d
of the fair and just who does not know in what way they are s»6A
good. Glaucon demands that Socrates, who has given all his s<>6bc
life to these studies, shall himself define the good, the thing that B1
all men divine, pursue, and desire, and not merely repeat the onPhiieb. 20 d
opinions of others. But Socrates is not winged for so high a s<>6de
flight. He can only body forth his surmise in an image. For
this he recurs to the distinction between the one and the many, 507 bc
the ideas of reason and the particulars of sense and opinion. 476-80
The sun, the cause of light and so of vision and visibility, is the 507-8
offspring and analogue of the idea of good in the world of sense.

As the eye sees clearly when turned toward the light of day
but is dim and blind in the dark, so in the intelligible world 508 cd
the soul perceives real truth and attains to fixed knowledge as
opposed to wavering opinion only in the light of the idea of
good. As the sun is not identical with either vision or visibility, sosab
yet is through light the cause of both, as the eye is not the sun S^i^n.ns9
but is the most sunlike of the organs of sense, so the good is it- 508 eb.
self neither intelligence nor intelligibility yet the author of both.

Nay more, as the sun (its warmth and motion) is the cause of
generation and growth, though not itself either, so the good is the 509 b
cause of real existence and essence, though itself raised above

232

WHAT PLATO SAID

509 c existence and supra-essential. This statement, which Glaucon
laughingly pronounces a marvelous hyperbole, we may accept
if we please merely as a religious and mystic ejaculation; or in
accordance with the interpretation of the good already given,
we may find a simple and definite meaning for it.

Tim. 29 de In cosmogony the good is the supreme cause, for the reason
that the goodness of God made out of chaos the cosmos which
Tim. 46 de we can understand aright only by tracing in it his benevolent
design. The good is above existence because for Plato the cate¬
gory of intelligible design possesses a higher reality than the
mere physical existence of the chaotic elements out of which it
(whether in the order of time or of logic) constructed the world
98C-99A we know. As the Phaedo puts it, the real cause of Socrates' re¬
maining in prison instead of running away to Megara or Boeotia
is not the bones and sinews that move his body, but his belief
that it is better to obey the laws of his country — in other words,
his idea of good. These meanings are still more apparent in the
field of human life and institutions with which the Republic is
mainly, I never said exclusively, concerned. A law, an institu¬
tion, a way of life, or system of education derives both its exist¬
ence and its intelligibility from the design, purpose, or ideal of
its authors. In the world as it is, statesmen and leaders are not
distinctly conscious of any such ideal or definite aim, nor have
they the mental grasp to apply it consistently if they had it.
The rulers of the ideal state will possess and consciously and
consistently apply such an ideal, and that conception of good
will be the cause and the explanation of everything that they do.
It is thus above all existence and yet its cause both as existent
and intelligible.

But this is to anticipate. Socrates first dwells on the distinc¬
tion between pure thought or reason and “understanding” or
opinion. For the main object of the higher education is to dis¬
cipline the powers of pure reason as a propaedeutic to the appre¬
hension of the good — in the sense already explained: Thedis-
509 d tinction is illustrated by another image. A line unequally di¬
vided represents in its longer section the intelligible world of
ideas presided over by the idea of good, and in its shorter por¬
tion the world of sense and opinion ruled by the sun. Suppose
the segments of the line to be divided in the same ratio as the

REPUBLIC

233

whole. The subdivisions of the smaller may then represent at
the lowest stage of reality images and reflections, and above
them the so-called real objects of sense. The corresponding divi¬
sions of the intelligible world are, at the top, the domain of pure
ideas apprehended by the reason and studied through the di¬
alectical method, and below them ideas, it is true, but ideas
apprehended by discursive thought and studied by the inferior
method of the “sciences,” as, e.g., mathematics. The method of
science is inferior to that of dialectics in two points: (i) Science
assumes hypotheses (the definitions and axioms of geometry)
into the validity of which it refuses to inquire. (2) Science em¬
bodies and contemplates the ideas in sensuous images. It uses
“real” things (geometrical blocks or diagrams) as copies of the
ideas which it studies, just as “real” things themselves are
copied by images and reflections in mirrors and water. Dialec¬
tic, on the other hand, deals with the pure ideas undistorted by
imperfect sensuous imagery; and if its assumptions or hypothe¬
ses are questioned is always ready to push the inquiry back be¬
yond hypothesis to first principles. The literature of misinter¬
pretation of this passage is so great that some further explana¬
tion of its simple meaning is called for. Plato is elucidating a
real difference of minds and methods which he was the first to
explain. And we must not lose sight of the validity of this dis¬
tinction in our eagerness to defend or assail his application of it
or the metaphysical implications which it may seem to involve.
There is, in fact, a difference between thinking in sensuous
imagery and thinking in pure abstractions (or words). The sci¬
entific habit of reasoning from unquestioned assumptions does
differ from the philosophical readiness and ability to extend in¬
definitely the analysis of the presuppositions either of science or
of common sense. The practical value of the distinction re¬
mains even though we affirm that all thought is ultimately de¬
pendent on sensuous imagery, and even though we deny that
dialectical analysis can ever reach a metaphysical “absolute” or
avviroOtTov. And its significance for Plato's purpose and Plato's
time would be little impaired if we should decide that in the
intellectual life of today what Plato calls the lower type of
thought is the more valuable. Plato's chief concern is to make
clear the distinction, and to affirm that the rulers of the ideal

510 A

510 BC

511 B

Phaedo 65 DE

510 CD

510 E

511 B

Cf. 510 B 6-7

234

WHAT PLATO SAID

Book VII
5M

517 A
515 C-E
Theaet. 175 B 0
516 BC
509 B

516 DE
486 A

Soph. 230 B-D
5i7 A
5i7 D
Theaet. 172-73
Gorg. 484 DE
On Euthyd. 273
E 5

518 BC

state must be prepared for what he deems the higher type of
thought by a prolonged and severe discipline in the lower.
“That which is beyond hypothesis” is for him primarily not a
metaphysical entity, the “unconditioned” or “absolute” of the
moderns, but a mere hypostatization of the dialectician's ability
and willingness to continue the analysis indefinitely, if need be.
In speaking of pure ideas and the reason he is not making a
Kantian distinction between the understanding and the reason,
or affirming any psychological doctrine as to the relation of con¬
ceptual thought to perception. He is insisting on the difference
between minds that can and minds that cannot reason swiftly,
clearly, distinctly, subtly, in abstract and general terms, not
merely in the technical terminology of a particular science but
on all matters of general human concern. The imagery in which
these thoughts are embodied undoubtedly suggests the meta¬
physical problems which modern interpreters find in the pas¬
sage. It is permissible to develop these metaphysical implica¬
tions in a systematic exposition of what we suppose to be
Plato's “philosophy.” But we should be as scrupulous as Plato
himself is careful to distinguish the practical application of his
principles in education, ethics, and politics from the metaphys¬
ics which he suggests but never affirms. The main argument
of the Republic is entirely independent of them, as Plato himself
repeatedly indicates.

Socrates employs another image. The “real” world is a cave
in which men sit fettered with their backs to a fire and able to
see only the shadows cast on the farther wall of the cave by
moving objects behind them and before the fire. These they
take for realities, and resist and resent the philosopher who
would drag them up the painful ascent to the realm of day and
the dazzling light of the sun, the ultimate cause of all. He who
has made this ascent will not prize very highly the wisdom of
the cave — the empiric observations of the coexistences and se¬
quences of the shadows; and when he first returns to it he will
seem as helpless in the dimness as does the philosopher in the
courtroom or the lawyer in the courts of philosophy. The appli¬
cation of the image and the conclusion are obvious.

The intellect is one and education is not what th z professions
of the Sophists proclaim it, the implanting of intelligence in

REPUBLIC

235

those who possess it not, but the conversion of the intellect 518 cd
from the shadows to the realities. The so-called (ethical) vir¬
tues are actually created by habit and drill like the “virtues” of
the body. But the intellect is a diviner faculty whose power 519 a
shows itself even in the cunning of little souls that employ it for Th,e9aseA 173 A’
base ends. Had such souls submitted to a circumcision, as it cf. 6hd
were, of the sensuous nature in youth and a conversion of the cf. 533 d
eye of the mind to higher realities, they would discern them as symP. 219 a
keenly as now the shadows. Our city must not be ruled by such 519 b
men, nor must it suffer the philosophers who have seen the true
sun to dwell idly in the beatific vision as colonists of some island 519 cd
of the blest. They must descend into the cave again and take ^£r§ 526C
their part in its labors and rewards — however contemptible. Laws 803 ac
We do not wrong them in requiring this. They are not the casu- 519 e
al products of accident — or grace divine like the good men who ~£°
may arise in existing states. We have bred them as king bees Pont. 301 de
in the hive. And when once their eyes are wonted to the dim- 520 a
ness, they will discern the shadows far better than those who 5™c94lB
have never seen the realities. Yet they will regard this political
service as a necessity, not a privilege. For this, as we have seen, ^
is the one condition of good government that the rulers should 347 d
not seek office for private gain but should condescend to it from 34s e
a higher and preferable life of their own. And there is no such 521 ab
life save the life of the true philosopher. sSods.

It remains, then, only to describe the studies supplementary 521c
to the preparatory education in music and gymnastics that will
effect the conversion of the mind whereof we speak, and as our
rulers are to be athletes of war, they must incidentally be studies ^aches 182 A
suitable to a soldier. Beginning with arithmetic, Socrates pro- 522 b
ceeds to show that geometry, plane and solid (which is now 528 b
shamefully neglected), pure mathematical physics, and astrono¬
my all possess these qualities. They present apparent contradic- 523-24
tions which provoke and awaken reflection. They presuppose
and develop the faculty of conceiving abstractions and of rea- 525 d
soning consecutively which is the indispensable prerequisite for 527 de
the apprehension of the “good.” And the study of mathemat- 529 ab
ics, if pursued for the sake of knowledge and not of huckstering, 525 c
incidentally quickens the intellect for all other studies. The l aws 747 B. 819
many interesting sidelights which the discussion casts upon

23 6

WHAT PLATO SAID

528 C, E 3

530 C

528 B 7
528 C

E.g. 525 C 2
527 B 5

529 B 2

530 B 7

531 B
532 A 6

532 ff.
534 E

On Phileb. 58 D
53i E
Theaet. 146 B
Euthyd. 290 C

537 C
Epin. 992 A

532 C

526-27
530 B 7

532 E

533 A

533 BC

533 C
534 BC

On Phaedo 76 B
Laws 966 B

fourth-century science will be considered elsewhere. For the
broad understanding of this part of the Republic , as well as for
the interpretation of the “scientific” details in the Timaeus, it is
essential to bear in mind Plato’s main purpose. He is not assail¬
ing modern experimental science. He is proposing a curriculum
for mental discipline and the development of the power of ab¬
stract thought, and incidentally predicting the mathematical
physics and astronomy of the future and advocating the guid¬
ance of “projects” and the endowment of research. It is un¬
critical to quote isolated sentences torn from their total context
in these pages as proof that Plato’s “science” proposed to spin
the universe out of the thinker’s inner consciousness.

All this, however, is only preparatory to dialectic, the crown
and consummation of the philosopher’s education. The man of
science, the mathematician, is not necessarily a good reasoner.
The dialectician is he who can take a synoptic survey. He must
learn to view his studies not in isolation but in their mutual re¬
lations and interdependence; and, as we have seen, he must be
able, renouncing sensuous imagery and hypothesis, to rise
through the pure ideas of reason to the idea of good (when that
is the relevant highest principle) and descend from it to the
particulars of sense. Socrates will not attempt to describe the
faculty and power of dialectic in its perfection or to portray
the consummation and beatific vision to which it conducts the
adept. He will merely affirm again that dialectic alone, discard¬
ing hypotheses and sensuous imagery, can bring to this goal
those who have been properly prepared for it by the training
prescribed in the inferior sciences.

Dialectics is the only pursuit that seeks truth for itself with
no ulterior motive and no regard to productive utility or the
opinions and desires of men. And more specifically Plato sums
up the practical outcome of the whole matter in language which
John Stuart Mill would approve. Unless a man can define in his
discourse and distinguish from all other things the “idea” of
good and as it were in pitched battle running the gauntlet of all
objections, and striving to refute them by realities, not by
plausibilities, proceed without stumbling or tripping in his ar¬
gument to the end, you will affirm that he neither knows the
good itself nor any particular good, but if he apprehends any

REPUBLIC

237

shadowy adumbration of the good, he apprehends it by opinion
and not by knowledge. “And dreaming and dozing through his
present life, before he awakens here he will arrive at the house
of Hades and fall asleep forever.”

From these heights we descend to practical regulation of the
order and distribution of studies. As already indicated, the
higher education is to be reserved for those who are worthy and
capable of it in youth — else we shall bring still more ridicule and
shame on philosophy. The earliest training must be imparted
pleasantly and through play that we may discern the natural
capabilities of the children. Severe studies must be intermitted
during the two or three years devoted to heavy gymnastic
training. At the age of twenty a selection may be made of the
most promising students, and the higher education may begin
with a survey of the relations and connections of the studies al¬
ready pursued. This is the only kind of knowledge that abides.
At the age of thirty another selection picks out those for whom
the final discipline of dialectic is reserved. We shall thus escape
the danger of unsettling moral and religious faith through the
canvassing of all questions by immature minds. An adopted son
ignorant of his birth and brought up amid sycophants in a
wealthy household would on learning that he was not the son of
his self-styled parents presumably be less regardful of them
and pay more heed to the fawning and flattering sycophants.
Similarly, the lad who finds himself unable to answer captious
objections to precepts which he has been taught to respect, and
who is unable to discover any other rule of life ceases to respect
anything, and the habit of eristic disputation soon makes him
skeptical of the existence of any fixed and settled truth and
ready to lend an ear to whatever flatters his instincts. But a
mature and sober mind will not thus be intoxicated by disputa¬
tion but will distinguish the investigation of truth from the
captiousness of eristic. Boys who imitate the Socratic elenchus
bring discredit on the whole pursuit.

Five years may be assigned to the practice of dialectics, and
at the age of thirty-five our students will be required to “de¬
scend into the cave” and for fifteen years take their part in the
offices of peace and war. Those who emerge triumphantly from
all these tests will become at the age of fifty the real rulers and

534 C

536 C

Laches 188 AB

535 C

536 BC
495 C ff.

536 E
425 A

Laws 707 AB

537 A
537 B

537 C
537 D

537 E

538 D, 539 BC
Phaedo 90 BC

538 A f.

538 DE
Phaedo 89 DE

539 C

Symp. 218 B
On Prot. 317 DE

539 BC

Apol. 23 C

539 E

519 c

540 A

238

WHAT PLATO SAID

500 DE
592 B 2

540 B
519 c
540 C
On Laws 759 C
Cratyl. 398 BC
540 D
On 472 C-E

541 ab
415 D
Laws 736 A-C
Laws 644 AB
752 C
813 D

Book VIII
543 A

On Laws 857 C ff.

544 D
548 D

544 A

545 B

544 C

544 DE
435 E
445 CD

579 C 5
591 E 1

545 ff-

On Laws 68
Phaedr. 23

Laws S’;

546 D

546 E-547 A
415 AB

547 B

guardians of the state. Fixing their eyes on the idea and pattern
of the good, they will endeavor to embody it in their own lives
and in the life of the city, for the most part devoting themselves
to philosophy but each taking his turn in the necessary service
of the state. So living, they will depart to the “islands of the
blest” when they die, and will receive the honors due to gods if
Delphi consents or, failing that, those due to godlike men. This
is not altogether a dream. It will come to pass whenever true
philosophers or a true philosopher shall govern men. The change
will be most speedily effected by banishing to the fields all above
the age of ten and educating the children in the new order of
things.

We have now returned to the point from which we digressed
at the beginning of the fifth book. The ideal state has been de¬
scribed and its practicability assumed. It is good (though Soc¬
rates conceives a still higher ideal), and divergent types must be
corruptions of it. To disregard the innumerable minor varieties,
there are four typical forms: the Cretan or Spartan “timocra¬
cy” or government by the principle of pride and honor, the
oligarchy, the democracy, and the tyrannis. Assuming four
(five) corresponding types of individual character, since states
derive their qualities from their citizenship, Socrates proceeds
to trace the progress of degeneration from monarchy or aris¬
tocracy (the ideal state may be either) to tyrannis — the whole
with the avowed purpose of determining the original question,
the relative happiness of the just and unjust man. The causes
of the beginning of the deterioration lie beyond our ken. While
the rulers are at one, every state endures. If we ask the Muses
how dissension first arises among the guardians and helpers,
they will tell us playfully in tragic style that everything that
has a birth has also an end. For all organic growths there are
periods of productiveness and sterility. For mortal births this is
determined by an obscure number which our guardians will
sometimes miss and so breed for the state at an unpropitious
season. They will thus be forced to place in office men of an
inferior strain who in turn will be less efficient guardians of the
purity of our four Hesiodic races. The silver, thejjold, thejron,
and the bronze will become mingled and confused, and so anom¬
aly and dissension will arise. The men of iron and bronze will

REPUBLIC

239

tug in the direction of money-making and the acquisition of
private property. The golden and silver men, being already rich 5478
by nature, will strive to maintain virtue and restore the original ^e
constitution. A compromise results. The rulers will divide the 547cdr' 279 c
land and set up private establishments. They will still reserve 548 a
for themselves the functions of war and government, and the
flocks of which they were the guardians they will convert into 417 ab
Perioeci and slaves. Their state will hold the mean between 547 c
aristocracy and oligarchy. It will resemble the ideal state in the 547 d
specialization of function, the common mess of the rulers, their 4j6e
abstinence from labor, and similar customs; but in their exclu¬
sive devotion to war and their distrust of culture and philosophy
it will be peculiar. They will cherish a fierce secret lust for
wealth and luxury, being controlled only by fear of the law and 548 a
not by the Muse of philosophic reason. They will exhibit a mix- 548B
ture of qualities among which the predominant high-spirited f^c
type will be most conspicuous. The corresponding individual 549
type will be contentious, self-willed, slightly inaccessible to
ideas, harsh to slaves, courteous to equals, subservient to au- Laws 777 d
thority, a gymnast and a hunter, in youth a contemner of wealth 5498
but avaricious in old age. 5498c

We may trace the genesis of the timocratic youth thus: He is
the son of an easy-going father in a badly governed state. He
hears his mother complaining that she is at a disadvantage 549 c ft.
among the other women because of his father’s lack of ambition
and manly spirit. The very servants admonish him that when 549 e
he arrives at man’s estate he must recover the debts and avenge
the injuries which his father overlooks. Thus drawn one way by
his father and another by the world, he settles down upon a
middle state and yields the sovereignty of his soul neither to 550 b
reason nor to appetite but to the intermediate principle of spirit. Ss3 bc
Oligarchy arises out of timocracy by the development of the ssoc
greed of gain that lurked in the timocratic man. For there is a ^ii498
fatal opposition between money and virtue, and when one rises 591 d
in the scale of honor the other sinks and is despised. A property 742Ve,783iB c
qualification is established by violence or terrorization. And so ssiab
the oligarchical state comes into being. Its defects are many. ss«c
Wealth would be a sorry criterion of a pilot, and it is a still cl 4889S,BC
worse one for the ruler of a state. The oligarchic state is com-

240

WHAT PLATO SAID

S5i D

422 £
Laws 739 D

551 E

552 A

On Charm. 161 E
Laws 741 BC,
744 DE

552 C

552 D

553 AB

553 B

553 C

330 C 8
Laws 698 A

. 553 D

554 A 10, 556 C

554 A

Phaedr. 256 E
Meno 90 A

554 B

Laws 631 C
554 C-E
Laws 777 DE
926-28

554 E

555 B
555 DE
Cf. 553 D

555 E-556 A

556 AB
haws 742 C 1
849 E
915 E

On Laches 179 D

556 D
Aristoph. Frogs
1086-98

556 DE

556 E

posed of two hostile communities, the few rich and the many-
poor, and the rulers will find themselves few indeed if they go
forth to battle without arming the populace. The specialty of
function breaks down in this state, and this first admits pauper¬
ism by allowing its citizens to mortgage and sell their patri¬
mony. Such prodigals are drones in the hive. Some drones have
stings, others are stingless — the one become criminals, the
other paupers in old age. Wherever beggars are in evidence
criminals lurk concealed.

The oligarchic or plutocratic man is the son of a timocradc
father who has held office and lost his all in suits brought by
sycophants in the name of the state. The humbled son hurls the
principle of pride and honor from his bosom’s throne and estab¬
lishes there as his ruling passion the greed of gain, allowing his
spirit to admire nothing but wealth, and his reason to think of
nothing but how to make two dollars out of one. He is penu¬
rious, thrifty — the kind of man that the multitude praise —
gratifies only his necessary desires, and honors the blind god
wealth above all others. But the appetites of the drone lurk
within his nature and reveal themselves in his treatment of
orphans, wards, and the defenseless generally, though they are
ordinarily held in check by other elements of his character and
his fear of consequences. Externally respectable, he is in soul
the apt image of all the vices we have already discerned in the
oligarchical city.

Democracy arises from the abuse of the principle of wealth.
Intent on money-getting and moneylending, the oligarchical
rulers allow high-spirited men to fall into hopeless poverty and
so swell the number of drones armed with stings. They are un¬
willing to check the shameless pursuit of wealth either by pro¬
hibiting the alienation of patrimonial estates or by refusing to
enforce monetary contracts in the courts and requiring all such
dealings to be based on confidence and good faith. They them¬
selves and their offspring grow lax and effeminate. The wiry,
sunburnt man of the people despises such fat asthmatic weak¬
lings when he has opportunity to observe them closely in battle
or bivouac or on the march, and begins to think that it is his
own lack of spirit that allows such fellows to keep their wealth.
A slight occasion or impulse from without is enough to raise the

REPUBLIC

24 1

spirit of faction in such a state, and an avowed democracy
arises when the party of the poor revolt and, killing some of the
plutocrats and exiling others, compel the remainder to live on a
footing of equality. Democracy is the reign of liberty — and li¬
cense. Every man says and does what he pleases, and there is
an infinite diversity which takes the eye as a richly broidered
robe delights boys and women. The student of politics (sociolo¬
gy) will find every type of life and character exposed to view in
democracy as in a great mart of institutions. And how charm¬
ing is the universal good nature and freedom from pedantic re¬
straint! You serve in the army or on the jury or hold office or
not as you please. The condemned criminal perambulates the
streets like a revenant and cherishes no ill will. No culture, no
tedious training or special qualifications, are exacted of the can¬
didate for office if only he profess himself the people’s friend. It
is_a delightful anarchic and parti-colored polity granting equal-
ity to equals and unequals alike.

The democratic youth is one who like his father, the oligarchic
man, at first strictly represses his unnecessary and spendthrift
appetites and indulges himself only in necessary and profitable
pleasures. Necessary are the pleasures which we cannot live
without, or which conduce to health and efficiency of mind or
body. Others are spendthrift and unnecessary. This youth is
corrupted by association with fierce drones and sharing in their
“unnecessary” pleasures. The change of government in his soul
is precisely analogous to that which converts oligarchy into
democracy. There are alliances and invasions from without and
reactions from within resulting in factious strife, exiles, and
restorations among the divided instincts and appetites of his
soul. Finally the vacant acropolis of his mind, abandoned by
its true guardians, learning, discipline, and right reason, is
seized by false and imposturous reasons. They close the gates ot
the citadel, admit no embassy of sage discourses from wise el¬
ders, and defeat and hurl forth to exile reverence which they
call silliness, temperance (moderation) which they dub coward¬
ice, and economy which they decry as boorishness and illiber-
ality. In their stead initiating the young man with extravagant
rites, they introduce in splendid cortege insolence which they call
breeding, anarchy which they euphemistically term liberty,

S57 A

557 B
557 C

[Xcn.] Rep. Ath.
II. 8

557 D

Euthyd. 303 D 6
553 A 4

557 E

Laws 955 BC

558 A

Andoc. I. 99

558 B

Ar. Knights 188 -
93

558 C

Gorg. 508 A
Laws 744 3C

558 CD

559 A

559 D

560 A-C

560 B
Tim. 90 A
Laws 961 D
5 60 C

Phaedo 92 D
560 CD

Cf. 474 D (Loeb)
Thucyd. 3. 82
560 E

WHAT PLATO SAID

242

prodigality under the name of magnificence, and shamelessness
sSi ab proclaimed manly spirit. The typical democrat, however, is he
who is so fortunate as not to be entirely debauched, but who
when the turmoil and fever of youth is passed settles down on
a sort of compromise, receives back some of the exiled princi¬
ples, and establishes a democratic equality of all appetites and
Gorg. 404 CD inclinations in his soul. He will not listen to the doctrine that
c I some pleasures are (inherently) bad and ought to be kept down,
561 b but honors all alike and gives all the turn of the lot as the mood
561 c takes him — one day he drinks wine and abandons himself to the
cf. 4ii a lascivious pleasing of the flute, and the next he is all for cold
water and spare fast that oft with gods doth diet. He alter¬
nately goes in for gymnastics and dolce far niente or for war,
Prot. 319D business, and politics, and bounces up in the Assembly to say
Symp. 181 b? whatever comes into his head. He is not one man, but all man-

561 e kind s epitome, and there is no principle of order or restraint
Cf'|!.7D in the free, happy, and diversified life which he leads.

562 b As the abuse of the plutocratic principle developed oligarchy

into democracy, so the excess of liberty in democracy engenders
tyranny. Intoxicated by the unmixed wine of liberty^ the de-

562 cd mocracy reviles as cursed oligarchs all rulers who enforce law
Gorg. 461 e and order, and as poor-spirited slaves all citizens who obey. All
Laws 890 a discipline and subordination is decried as incompatible with

562 e freedom. The father fears the son rather than the son the

563 b father. Citizens and aliens, men and women, teachers and pu¬

pils, young and old, slaves and masters, mingle familiarly in
democratic equality. Like master, like dog,” says the proverb.

562 e The very animals catch the infection, and cattle and asses
Laws 942 D solemnly jostle you and take the wall of you on the public ways.

563 de So sensitive at last becomes the spirit of the citizens that they
On Laws 793 a Pay heed to any laws, written or unwritten. They will have

no master over them.

563 a I his excess, by a law that holds in the moral as in the physical
Lysias 25. 27 world, provokes a reaction to the opposite extreme from de-

564 b mocracy to tyranny. The same pest enslaves democracy that
555 de destroyed oligarchy— the multiplication of the drones. Under

564 de democracy released from restraint and permitted to hold office
6 D they are absolute masters the more energetic acting as leaders
573 a 4 a.nd speakers, the stingless multitude swarming and buzzing

REPUBLIC

243

about the bema and permitting no others to be heard. In the
universal pursuit of money the most industrious and orderly
become on the whole the most wealthy; and these busy bees are
the natural prey and spoil of the drones. The real power rests
with a third class of the population, the “workers,” if they care
to exercise it. But they can be lured to the Assembly only by a
share of the honey which the leaders of the drones squeeze from
the rich, keeping the greater part for themselves. The well-to-
do, in attempting to protect themselves, incur the suspicion of
hostility to democracy. They become “oligarchs” whether they
will or no, and impeachments and conflicts in the courts follow.
The popular party maintains a leader or “protector,” and from
this root the tyrant grows. In the Arcadian legend he who tastes
of the human entrails mingled with offerings from many other
victims is fated to become a wolf. So the popular leader who
pollutes himself with judicial murder, and raises the standard of
confiscation and agrarianism, will either be slain by his enemies
or become himself a wolf. He may be driven into exile and re¬
turn by force of arms a finished tyrant, or his enemies, unable to
secure his banishment, seek to assassinate him. Then he makes
the famous request for a bodyguard to protect the people’s
friend. The innocent folk grant it, fearing for him but not for
themselves. And then his wealthy enemies suspected of un¬
democratic sentiments, perceiving that discretion is the better
part of valor, stand not upon the order of their going but flee
incontinently to exile. Those that are taken are put to death,
and the protector, his foes overthrown, bestrides the state like
a colossus, and the making of the tyrant is complete. At first
he is a king of smiles; he denies that he is a tyrant and scatters
promises freely. Once secure in his seat and when he has dis¬
posed of or compromised with his exiled enemies, he provokes
wars that the people may still feel the need of a leader, and that
he may expose the defenders of liberty to danger. If any of his
supporters protest, he must put them out of the way. And in
general whosoever are brave, noble, wise, of good repute, are
suspect to him. He must purge the state of the best, and choose
his intimates from the base remnant. Such is his happiness. So
living he will need more bodyguards, mercenaries, winged alien
drones, or slaves of the citizens whom he will enfranchise and

564 E

56s A

Soph. 223 D

564 E 10

565 B

565 BC
565 D

Ar. Knights 1128
565 DE

619 C 1
566 A

Laws 684 E
737 B

566 B

Herod. I. 59
Ar. Rhet. 1357
b 32

566 C

566 CD

n. xvi. 776
566 DE

Shaks., Henry IV,

I. 1. 3

Eurip. I. A. 334 £f

Polit. 308 A

566 E

567 B

Laws 832 C
Gorg. 510 BC

567 0

580 A

567 DE

568 A

244

WHAT PLATO SAID

568 AB
Theag. 125 B

394 D, 398 A,
598-99
360 C 3
Gorg. 502 B

Laches 183 AB

568 D

568 E

574 D 1

569 AB
569 A 8
362 A 2, 466 C 2

Cf. 574 BC
569 B

Book IX
571-72
558 D
572 B

Ar. Eth. Nic. 1102
b 5
572 D

572 E-573 A
Symp. 205 D
Ale. I. 135 E
564 D
573 AB

560 CDE
Symp. 197 B
573 BC

573 E

574 BC
569 B
Laws 880 E ff.

574 DE

574 E
576 B

575 B

Gorg. 508 E
Xen. Mem. I. 2
62

575 C

574 BC

make his familiars — thus verifying Euripides’ saying that
tyrants are wise from living with the wise. And we may observe
in passing that tragic poets must pardon us if we banish them
from our state as lauders of “godlike” tyranny. Their sonorous
eloquence is well suited to turbulent democracies and the courts
of tyrants, but its breath somehow fails on the steep heights of
the true polity.

For a time the tyrant will maintain his motley crew on the
proceeds of confiscation and the sale of sacred property. This
failing, he will fall back on his father’s estate. The Demos that
bred the tyrant will have to support him and his dissolute band.
And if the old sire bids the prodigal son depart from his home
with his revelers, he will learn too late what a monster he has
nourished, no kindly nurse of his old age, but one who will not
shrink from striking his father. Thus the tyranny is open and
avowed, and Demos, fleeing the smoke of obedience to law,
falls into the fire of slavish despotism.

The “unnecessary” and lawless desires that lurk in the most
respectable of men reveal themselves in the riotous fancies of
dreams when the higher nature is asleep. The tyrant is gener¬
ated when such desires obtain complete sway in the soul. Upon
the son of our typical democrat the drones renew their attack.
They set up in his soul a ruling passion, a winged spirit of desire,
as leader and “protector” of his unnecessary appetites, which
buzz about it and foster it until in its frenzy it slays and exiles
all better thoughts and inclinations. Love, drunkenness, mad¬
ness, are all tyrannical moods and may serve to depict the tem¬
per of the tyrannical man. The young nestlings of importunate
desires ever hatching out in his soul still clamor for more. To
satisfy these he must beg or steal from his father or, failing that,
use violence and strike him. The analogy with the political ty¬
rant completes itself and the man becomes in fact what he was
in his most lawless dreams. If the number of such men in a city
is small, the harm they work is relatively speaking insignificant.
They merely indulge in a little stealing, housebreaking, purse¬
taking, highway robbery, sacrilege, and kidnapping, or it may
be bear false witness and take bribes. If they are many they es¬
tablish the most tyrannical among them as actual tyrant of the
state — one who, as he was ready to strike his father or mother,

REPUBLIC

245

will not shrink from violating and enslaving the dear fatherland
or motherland, as the Cretans call it. This would be the con¬
summation of the tyrant who being most base is also the most
wretched, and the more miserable the longer he plays the ty¬
rant — whatever the multitude may say.

With this defiant anticipation of the conclusion Plato intro¬
duces the first of the three arguments by which in this book
the original question is settled: The virtue and happiness of
each type of man will be proportional to these qualities in the
corresponding city. The tyrannized city is the basest and also
the most wretched— if we are not dazzled by the splendor of
the tyrant’s court, raiment, and retinue, and similarly, if we
assume that we have lived with tyrants and can read the inner
man, and have seen him naked of his tragic vestments, we shall
see that the tyrant’s soul is the most miserable of all. In both
the better part is enslaved to the worst. The soul that is the
slave of desire cannot do what it really wills. It is always hun¬
gry for more and the perpetual prey of repentance and alarms.
The consummation of such wretchedness is when the tyrant’s
soul inhabits the body of an actual tyrant. He is like the owner
of many slaves who should be suddenly wafted from the protect¬
ing neighborhood of his fellow-slaveholders to a lonely place
where he could secure himself only by fawning upon his own
slaves. Or rather we must conceive him girt about by neighbors
who abhor slavery and will not tolerate one man’s claim to be
master of another. To such tremors and alarms is the tyrant
prisoner. Full of greed and desire, he cannot stir abroad to en¬
joy fair sights and sounds like other freemen. He must cower
in the dark corners of his palace like a woman. Unable to govern
himself, he is forced to govern others. He is a slave and a cow¬
ard, faithless, friendless, joyless, a vessel of wrath fulfilled of in¬
iquity and vice, a curse to himself and the world.

And now, like the judges at the games, let us declare the order
of the contestants for the highest prize of happiness, and pro¬
claim by voice of herald or our own lips that the son of Ariston
pronounces happiest the true aristocrat or kingly man who is
king over himself first, and most miserable the tyrant who with
soul enslaved by desire attempts to rule others— alike whether
they are known or not known to be such. This is one proof.

575 d

414 E

576 C

Gorg. 473 C-E
576 C 3
579 D 7
473 A 2
500 D 2
Gorg. 473 E 5

577 DE
577 D 10
445 B 2
Gorg. 467 B
Laws 661 B

577 E

Gorg. 493-94

578 C

578 DE

579 A

579 AB

579 B
578 A

Laws 736 E
Xen. Hiero I. 12

Laws 781 C

579 C

On Gorg. 491 D

580 A

580 B

580 BC
Phileb. 66 A

Laws 664 B
Gorg. 491 D
580 C 6
367 E 4
427 D
445 A

246

WHAT PLATO SAID

58°58iDC3 A second is that, of the three primary types of men whom
our provisional tripartite psychology distinguished, the lover of
582 ab wisdom has necessarily, as a man, experienced the alleged de-

581 de lights of sense and ambition and therefore his judgment must be

ratified that pronounces the life of philosophy most happy. But

582 ab the sensualist and the slave of ambition have never tasted the

joys of philosophy and cannot estimate them. Moreover, the
philosopher’s experience is accompanied and interpreted by the
582 de other two criteria of sound judgment in every matter — intelli-
583 a gence and discourse of reason or logos. From every point of
Law!<&3 c view, then, his estimate is valid.

583 b The third argument is the unreality and relativity of the
phiieb. 36 a fr. lower pleasures. The sick say that there is no greater pleasure

Phiie5b.345B than health; and, on the other hand, the cessation of pleasure is

584 a accounted pain. The neutral quiescent state is confounded now

with the negative, now with the positive pole of feeling. This
appears from the observation of pleasures which are not pre-
584 b conditioned by pain. Agreeable odors, for example, are pre-
phiieb. 51 b, e ceded by no disagreeable inanition and their cessation is not
584 c painful. But the majority of bodily pleasures are merely the
Gorg. 493-94 filling of an aching void, the riddance of uneasiness. The illusion
phaedr!>2si e is that of one who moving toward the centre from below should
Tim. 6S28cd suppose himself to be really moving “up,” or of one who should
mistake gray for white through ignorance of the true white.
s8Sb Again hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body as folly and
Gors8459i>I ignorance are of the soul. The nourishment of the soul is’more
phaedr. 248 b 5 nearly akin to true being and yields a higher and more real de-
Soph586AB light than the unsatisfying repletions of sense. Yet it is for the
Phiieb. 67 b latter that the multitude with eyes bent earthward contend like
cattle butting and goring one another with horns and hooves of
iron. They fight for the false pleasure in ignorance of the true
s86c as in Stesichorus’ version of the legend the Greeks at Troy
isoc. Hei. 64 contended for the wraith of Helen whose true body was in
Eunp. Hei. 600 a. Aegypt. N0 iess unreal and unsatisfying are the gratifications
of passionate emotions as anger, ambition, envy, and conten¬
tiousness. But the soul of the philosopher in which each faculty
performs its proper function enjoys the proper pleasures of each
586 de and, humanly speaking, the true pleasure. We may estimate
587 bc the interval between him and the tyrant. The tyrant is at the

REPUBLIC

247

third remove from the oligarch and the oligarch is the third
from the king or aristocrat. The superficial ratio is three times
three, or nine. But if we look below the surface and probe the
tyrant’s misery in all its depth, we must cube the number and
admit that the kingly man is more happy in the ratio of 729 to
I — an apt number to measure the nights and days that round
out the years of mortal life.

And now we may sum up the whole argument in an image.
Conceive — since language is plastic we can — a multiform mon¬
ster of changing heads, a lion, and a man united like the tri¬
partite chimaera of fable, but enveloped in the outward sheath
and semblance of a man. The advocates of injustice then affirm
that it is profitable to starve the man, suffering the brute beasts
to wax strong and wrangle, and drag him this way and that.
But he who praises justice would have us so live as to make the
man master of the many-headed beast to tame and guide it
with the lion’s aid. What better criterion is there of the fair and
honorable than that it subjects the brute to the human or rather
the divine? It would not profit a man to take much gold and
sell his son to cruel slavery. Shall it profit him to sell his own
soul, to enslave the divinest part of his nature for such base
bribes as Eriphyle took to betray her husband’s life? What is
wantonness but the emancipation of the many-headed brute?
What self-will and peevishness but the predominance of the lion
and the snake? And why is “base mechanic” a term of reproach
if it does not mean such a weakening of the higher faculties that
they cannot rule the lower? For this cause and not to wrong
them, as Thrasymachus supposed, we set over such men a ruler
in whom the higher principle prevails in order that all alike may
be governed by the highest and best. This is the true signifi¬
cance of law — an ally of our better nature. And this is why we
withhold liberty from children until we have established a polity
in their souls and enabled the better part of themselves to take
the place of our authority. How shall impunity in wrongdoing
profit a man if chastisement tends to tame the brute beast and
restore to the soul a health and order which are as much more
precious than bodily health as soul is more worth than body?
The wise man will make it his chief aim to preserve the polity
in his soul and the true harmony of his faculties. By this aim he

Cf. 445 D
Menex. 238 D 2

587 D

587 E

588 A

588 BC
588 D
473 A
Tim. 70 E
Charm. 155 DE

Phaedr. 229 D 6
588 E ff.

589 B
Cf. 441 A
589 D
Cf. soi B

589 E

590 A

Matt. 16:26
Laws 726 ff.
Od. XI. 326
S90 AB

590 C

495 E

Rivals 137 B

590 DE

343 B ff.

Laws 713 D ff.
Ale. I. 135 BC
Polit. 296 BC

Xen. Mem. 1. 5. 5

590 E

Lysis 207 E
Laws 808 D

591 BC
380 B 2

On Prot. 324 AB
Gorg. 472 E, 480
AB, 505 AB
Laws 728 C

591 C-E
544 DE, 579 C

Laches 188 D

248

WHAT PLATO SAID

618 c

443 E

Gorg. 541 E f.
591-93

Cf. 496 DE

592 AB
Luke 17:21
Theaet. 176 E

Book X

394 D
363 C-E

595 AB

Supra, pp. 218-19

will estimate all studies and pursuits — the pleasures and even
the health of the body, the just measure of wealth undazzled by
vulgar conceptions of happiness, and all public and private
honors which he will accept or reject as he deems best for the
health and right order of his soul. Fie will not take part in the
politics of his earthly city except under providential leading.
“Fie is born to other politics.”

His true city is that which we have portrayed — the city of
the ideal. It exists nowhere upon earth today. But a pattern of
it is laid up in heaven. On this he will fix his eyes and by this
govern himself.

The tenth book, though in strict logic an appendix to the
main argument, deals with two topics which Plato could hardly
omit — the deeper philosophical justification of the banishment
of the poets and the rewards of the just man in the life to come.
The structure of a literary work cannot be deduced by mechani¬
cal rules and is always exposed to cavil. There is no perfect
plot. But it is not easy to see what better place Plato could
have chosen for the treatment of these topics. It is character¬
istic of Plato’s art to relieve the monotony of uninterrupted elo¬
quence by the interposition of level passages of colloquy or di¬
alectic. The ninth book ends on a height of moral eloquence
from which Socrates descends to argumentative discussion only
in order to prepare us the better for the still loftier flight of the
closing myth. Similarly, in the Symposium the heights of Aga-
thon’s and Socrates’ speeches are brought out by the plain of
familiar conversation that intervenes. It is of course conceiv¬
able that the renewed discussion of poetry was provoked by
some contemporary criticism of the views expressed in the sec¬
ond and third books. But it is idle to base a theory of the com¬
position of the Republic on such possibilities. It is better to ac¬
cept Plato’s explicit statement that the psychology of the later
books was required to bring out the full significance and justifi¬
cation of his doctrine. In Books II and III criticism is directed
mainly upon the content of Homer’s teaching. Here the reality
of “poetic truth” and the wholesomeness of poetic emotion are
called in question. The earlier criticism was met in antiquity by
the explanation that Homer allegorized. The challenge of the
tenth book gave rise to the literature of the defense of poesy

REPUBLIC

249

from Aristotle to Sir Philip Sidney, from Shelley to Professor
Woodbury. Plato's rejection of poetic truth is ostensibly based
on the theory of ideas stated ir its simplest and seemingly most
naive form, a fact which of course cannot be used to date the
passage or to trace the evolution of the theory. God makes the
idea of a couch — the essential reality. The artisan copies or em¬
bodies the idea in the so-called real couches of experience. The
artist with colors or highly colored words copies the copy in such
fashion as to deceive the ignorant. He in a sense can create ev¬
erything, including himself. He is a marvelous Sophist indeed.
Art, then, is a creator of illusions at three removes from reality.
If Homer possessed the reality of the universal knowledge at¬
tributed to him by his admirers, why was he not a legislator like
Lycurgus and Solon, a general like Agamemnon, inventor or dis¬
coverer as Thales and Anacharsis, founder of a religion or a way
of life with Pythagoras? He was not even esteemed as a teacher
like Protagoras and Prodicus. The illusion that the poet knows
all things is due to the spell of fine words and rhythm. Stripped
of these, the sayings of the poets make a sorry show. Again,
from another point of view we may distinguish in reference to
everything the user who knows its virtues and defects, and the
maker who to perform his task successfully must acquire right
opinion from the user. The artist has neither the knowledge of
the one nor the sound opinion of the other. He is a mere imita¬
tor — a copyist.

A still graver indictment is the fact that he appeals to the
emotional and irrational part of the soul. Reason protects us
against illusion by measuring, weighing, calculating; poetry fos¬
ters it for no good ends. So poetry indulges the emotional part
of us in the luxury of fictitious woes — and thus goes directly
counter to the discipline and philosophy of life which teaches us
to preserve an intelligence unclouded by passion in difficulties,
and to endure grief with equanimity and composure. It subtly
corrupts even the best of us by stimulating the lust for tears and
excitement in fictitious sorrows where we think it no shame to
indulge them, forgetting that we shall thus be led to abandon
ourselves to them in reality. So when the encomiasts of Homer
tell us that this poet has been the educator of Hellas, and that
we ought to study him and take him for the guide of our lives,

596 a

479 D

Phaedo 76 D
100 B 5

597 B

596 B
Cratyl. 389

597 ABC

601 A
596 D

Eurip. Hippol. 921

598 99

598 C-E
Soph. 233 A

599 DE

600 A
600 B

Laws 782 C
600 BC
Prot. 315 A

598 E
601 AB

Gorg. 502 C

601 C ff.

Euthyd. 289 BC

602 AB

602 DE

Phileb. 41 E f.,

55 E

Prot. 356 CD

603 E ff.

604 B ff.

60s C

606, 387 CD
Laws 732 C, 960 A
606 B, 395 C
Laws 656 B.

669 BC
606 E

WHAT PLATO SAID

607 A

595 C
605 CD
Theaet. 152 E 5

Laws 801 D

Laws 302 C

607 BC
Laws 967 CD

607 D
Laws 776 E
G58 D 6, 682 A
Phaedo 95 A
Phaedo 114 C

608 AB
589 E
On Laws 662 B
608 CD
Crito 54 BC
Supra, p. 229

608 E ff.
498 D

352 DE (Loeb)

610 DE

611 A
Phaedo 72

Phaedo passim
Phaedr. 245 CD

25°

we may love and honor them for their devotion to the highest
thing they know. We may concede that Homer is the most po¬
etic of poets and the first of tragedians, but we must stand firm
in the knowledge that the only poems we can admit into our
city are hymns to the gods and praise of good men. “For if you
grant admission to the honeyed Muse in lyric or epic, in song or
verse, pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead of law
and that which shall from time to time have approved itself to
the general reason as the best.” Reason constrains us to this
decision, and there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy
and poetry to which many old sayings testify. If the mimetic
and dulcet Muse can justify her existence in a well-ordered
state, we shall listen to her gladly, and we will grant a hearing
to any apologist who desires to plead for her in prose or verse.
We are very conscious of her charms, “and thou too, dear
friend, art thou not thyself beguiled by her and chiefly when
thou dost contemplate her through Homer?” But great is the
prize for which we are striving, and what shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world of poetry and art and lose his own
soul?

Yet the greatest rewards of virtue have not been mentioned,
those which attend upon the immortality of the soul — some¬
thing which Socrates, to the real or affected surprise of Glaucon,
undertakes to prove easily.

It is a general truth that nothing can be destroyed except by
its own specific evil, as iron by rust, grain by mildew. Injustice,
the specific evil of the soul, does not even tend to destroy it, ex¬
cept indirectly, as when a malefactor is executed. On the con¬
trary, it often makes the malefactor very lively and very wake¬
ful.

If, then, souls are immortal, they must always be the same.
They cannot grow less, since none perish, and if mortal things
became immortal to increase their number, all things would
finally be immortal. The immortality of the soul, then, is proved
by this and other arguments. But to learn its true nature we
should need to contemplate it in its first and purest state, and
not as now, marred by communion with the body and other
miseries, so that, as men say of the sea-god Glaucus, crushed,
mutilated, and incrusted with accretions of shells, seaweed, and

REPUBLIC

251

rock, we can hardly divine the original shape. To recover that
we must look elsewhere, to the soul's love of wisdom, its divine
apprehensions, its immortal yearnings, and the things to which
it is truly akin. We must conceive what it might be if cleansed
and scraped clean of all the earthy and stony accretions that
now cling to it because of its devotion to the sensuous delights
that are accounted happiness. So and so only could we learn
whether it is indeed manifold or single in its simplicity, and
what is the truth about it and how.

The guerdons of righteousness, worldly or other-worldly, were
explicitly excluded in the original formulation of the question
whether justice is or is not intrinsically its own reward. But
now, having proved his case independently of these, Plato
thinks that no one can fairly object if he points out that in fact
honesty is usually the best policy even in this world, and that
there is good hope that the legends of a life and judgment to
come are in essence true. He withdraws what Emerson calls the
immense fallacy of the concession that substantial justice is not
done here and now. Even in this world the unjust man, how¬
ever fairly he may start upon the race, is certain to stumble and
falter before the goal is reached, and it is the righteous man who
wins in the end. And then, unwilling to forego any sanction of
right conduct, Plato rises from the region of dialectic demonstra¬
tion to the world of faith, aspiration, and trust, and offers us in
place of the rejected gross material paradise of Hesiod and the
Orphic poets one of those beautiful tales of the after-judgment
and retribution in which Martineau, their best interpreter, finds
a genuine if somewhat melancholy and uncertain anticipation
of triumphant Christian hope.

It is not, Socrates says, the tale to Alcinous told that I shall
unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold, Er, the son of Armenius,
of the tribe of Everyman. His body fallen in battle was taken
up sound on the tenth day, and on the twelfth day he came to
life on the funeral pyre and related what his soul had seen. He
said that it journeyed with a multitude to a weird place, where
two openings side by side faced two mouths in the heavens. Be¬
tween them sat judges who after judgment fastened tablets be¬
fore and behind on the just and the unjust, and sent them by

611 E
494 D

Phaedo 79 D
611 D

Phaedo 81 CD
Phaedr. 250 C

Tim. 42 C
On Charm. 158 A
Phaedr. 271 A 7
Tim. 72 D

367 E

612 B 7
Laws 802 A 8
Soph. 243 A 4

Laws 730 CD
Eurip. El. 9SS

363 CD

614 B
Od. IX. 2 ff.

614 C

Gorg. 524 A
Phaedo 107 D,
113 D

Gorg. 524 E, 526
BC

Gorg. 526 B 7

252

WHAT PLATO SAID

25 *33-34,

6?4D t^e r^g^lt hand up to heaven or by the left hand down to hell.
Luke 16:27-31 He, they said, was to be the messenger to mankind from that
other world and must observe all things there with care. So he
said that he saw the souls departing through the openings and
by the other two mouths others returning, squalid and dusty

614 e from beneath the earth, or pure and radiant from heaven. They
Gorg.s*4A, encamped on the meadow as at a festival and acquaintances

greeted one another and asked and answered questions concern¬
ing the dread things that had befallen them in hell and the
things beautiful beyond compare that they had seen in the
heavens.

615 a To tell it all would take all our time. The sum is that penal-
Phaedo 113 d-e ties and rewards were tenfold on the assumption that the space

615 c of human life is one hundred years. And there were special aro-
visions for infants that died as soon as born, and especially h arsh
phaedo 113 e penalties for impiety and murder. He heard one ask for virdi-
aeus the Great, who had been a wicked tyrant a thousand 'ears

615 d before. No chance of his coming here, was the reply. For among
Phaedo 113E our chief terrors was this, that when on the journey back souls
Gorg. 525 de incurable or insufficiently purged of guilt (they were mostly ty¬
rants and great malefactors) approached the mouth, it bellowed

Euseb. Praep.^Ev. an(q thereupon savage men of fiery aspect laid hold on them and
Gorg. 525 de bore them away. And we saw there this Ardiaeus and others,

616 a mostly tyrants, whom they bound hand and foot and carded on

thorns by the wayside, proclaiming the cause to all that passed
Phaedo 113E by, and into what pit of Tartarus they were to be hurled. And
Eurip'or.^s everyone trembled lest he hear the voice, and they came forth
gladly when it was silent.

616 b After seven days they journeyed from the meadow, and they
came in four days to a spot whence they discerned, extended
from above throughout the heaven and the earth, a straight
light like a pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow, but
brighter and purer. To this they came after going forward a
day’s journey, and they saw there at the middle of the light the

616 c extremities of its fastenings stretched from heaven, for this
light was the girdle of the heavens like the undergirders of
triremes, holding together in like manner the entire circumfer¬
ence. And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of
Necessity, through which all the orbits turned. Its staff and its

REPUBLIC

253

hook were made of adamant, and the whorl commingled of these
and other kinds. And the nature of the whorl was this: Its
shape was that of those in our world, but from his description
we must conceive it to be as if in one great whorl, hollow and
scooped out, there lay, inclosed right through, another like it
but smaller, fitting into it as boxes that fit into one another, and
in like manner another, a third and a fourth, and four others, for
there were eight of the whorls in all, lying within one another,
showing their rims as circles from above and forming the con¬
tinuous back of a single whorl about the shaft which was driven
home through the middle of the eighth. Now the circle of the
first and outmost whorl had the broadest rim, that of the second
was next, and third was that of the fourth, and fourth was that
of the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth,
seventh that of the third, eighth that of the seventh; and that of
the greatest was spangled, that of the seventh brightest, that of
the eighth took its color from the seventh that shone upon it.
The colors of the second and fifth were like one another and
more yellow than the two former. The third had the whitest
color, and the fourth was of a slightly ruddy hue, the sixth was
second in whiteness. The staff turned as a whole in a circle with
the same movement, but within the whole as it revolved the
seven inner circles revolved gently in the opposite direction to
the whole, and of these seven the eighth moved most swiftly,
and next and together with one another the seventh, sixth, and
fifth, and third in swiftness as it appeared to them moved
the fourth which returns upon itself, and fourth the third
and fifth the second. And the spindle turned on the knees of
Necessity, and up above on each of the rims of the circles a
siren was fixed, borne around in its revolution and uttering one
sound, one note, and from all the eight there was the concord
of a single harmony. And there were other three who sat around
at equal intervals, each on her throne, the Fates, daughters of
Necessity, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, who sang
in unison with the music of the sirens, Lachesis the things that
were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that
are to be. And Clotho with the touch of her right hand helped
to turn the outer circumference of the spindle, pausing from
time to time. Atropos with her left hand in like manner helped

616 D

616 E

617 A

On Tim. 36 C

617 B

On Tim. 36 D

617 C

254

WHAT PLATO SAID

617 d to turn the inner circle, and Lachesis alternately with either
hand lent a hand to each.

Now when they arrived they were straightway bidden to go
On Phaedr. 235 C before Lachesis, and then a certain prophet first marshaled
them in orderly intervals and thereupon took from the lap of
Necessity lots and patterns of lives and went up to a lofty plat¬
form and spoke, “This is the word of Lachesis, the maiden
Laws 923 a daughter of Necessity, ‘Souls that live for a day, now is the be-
Aesch. Pron^3, ginning of another cycle of mortal generation where birth is the

617 e beacon of death. No divinity shall cast lots for you, but you
Phaedo 107 D 7 shall choose your own. Let him to whom falls the first lot first

select a life to which he shall cleave of necessity. But virtue has
no master over her, and each shall have more or less of her as he
Tim. 42 A honors her or does her despite. The blame is in your choice;
on Theaet. 176 a God is blameless.* ” So saying, he flung the lots out among
them, and each took up the lot that fell by his side, except him¬
self; him they did not permit. And whoever took up a lot saw
plainly what number he had drawn.

618 a And after this the prophet placed the patterns of lives before

them on the ground, far more numerous than the assembly.
They were of every variety, for there were lives of all kinds of
animals and all sorts of human lives. There were tyrannies
Laws 661 d 7 among them, some uninterrupted till the end and others de¬
stroyed midway and issuing in penuries and exiles and beggaries,
and there were lives of men of repute for their forms and beauty
and bodily strength otherwise, and prowess and the high birth
618 b and the virtue of their ancestors, and others of ill repute in the
same things. But there was no determination of the quality of
soul, because the choice of a different life inevitably determined
a different character. But all other things were commingled
with one another and with wealth and poverty and sickness and
health and the intermediate conditions. And there, dear Glau-
phaedo 107 c 4 con, it appears, is the supreme hazard for a man. And this is the
618 c chief reason why it should be our main concern that each of us
neglecting all other studies should be a seeker and learner of
this, if he can learn and discover the man who will give him the
ability and the knowledge to distinguish the life that is good
from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to choose
^j4! the best that the conditions allow, and taking into account all

REPUBLIC

255

the things of which we have spoken and estimating the effect
on the goodness of his life of their conjunction or their severance,
to know how beauty commingled with poverty or wealth and
combined with what habit of soul operates for good or evil, and
what are the effects of high and low birth and private station
and office and strength and weakness and quickness of appre¬
hension and dulness and all similar natural and acquired habits
of the soul when blended and combined with one another, so
that with consideration of all these things he will be able to
make a reasoned choice between the better and the worse life,
with his eyes fixed on the condition of his soul, naming the worse
life that which will tend to make it more unjust and the better
that which will make it more just. But all other considerations
he will dismiss, for we have seen that this is the best choice, for
both life and death. And a man must take with him to the
house of death an adamantine faith in this, that even there he
may be undazzled by riches and similar trumpery, and may not
precipitate himself into tyrannies and similar doings and so
work many evils past cure and suffer still greater himself, but
may know how always to choose in such things the life that is
seated in the mean, and shun the excess in either direction, both
in this world so far as may be and in all the life to come, for this
is the greatest happiness for man.

And so then too the messenger reported that the prophet
spoke thus, “Even for him who comes forward last, if he make
his choice wisely and live strenuously, there is reserved an ac¬
ceptable life, no evil one. Let not the foremost in the choice be
unheedful nor the last be discouraged.” When the prophet had
thus spoken, Er said that the drawer of the first lot at once
sprang to seize the greatest tyranny, and that in his folly and
greed he chose it without sufficient examination, and failed to
observe that it involved the fate of eating his own children, and
other horrors, and that when he inspected it at leisure he beat
his breast and bewailed his choice, not abiding by the forewarn¬
ing of the prophet. For he did not blame himself for his woes
but fortune and the gods and anything except himself. He was
one of those who had come down from heaven, a man who had
lived in a well-ordered polity in his former existence, participat¬
ing in virtue by habit and not by philosophy; and one may per-

Laws 662 B
Phaedo 107 BC,
114 C

618 D

Phaedr. 237 D 8

618 E

619 A
360 B s
Gorg. 509 A 1
Laws 661-62
Gorg. 527 BC

Laws 691 C

619 B

619 C

On Phaedo 90 D

Phaedo 82 AB
619 D

WHAT PLATO SAID

619 £

620 A

On Phaedo 81 E

620 B

620 C

256

haps say that a majority of those who were thus caught were of
the company that had come from heaven, inasmuch as they
were unexercised in suffering. But the most of those who came
up from the earth, since they had themselves suffered and seen
the sufferings of others, did not make their choice precipitately.
For which reason also there was an interchange of good and evil
for most of the souls, as well as because of the chances of the lot.
Yet if at each return to the life of this world a man loved wis¬
dom sanely, and the lot of his choice did not fall out among the
last, we may venture to affirm from what was reported thence
that not only will he be happy here but that the path of his
journey thither and the return to this world will not be under¬
ground and rough but smooth and through the heavens.

I~Ie said that it was a sight worth seeing to observe how the
several souls selected their lives. It was a strange, pitiful, and
ridiculous spectacle. The choice was determined for the most
part by the habits of their former lives. He saw the soul that
had been Orpheus', he said, selecting the life of a swan. From
hatred of the tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands,
it was unwilling to be conceived and born by a woman. He saw
the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale. Fie saw
a swan changing to the choice of the life of man, and similarly
other musical animals. The soul that drew the twentieth lot
chose the life of a lion. It was the soul of Ajax, the son of Tela¬
mon, which, because it remembered the adjudication of the
arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become a man. The next, the
soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human race,
because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle. Some¬
where in the middle of the lots the soul of Atalanta caught sight
of the great honors attached to an athlete's life and could not
pass them by but snatched at them. After her, he said, the soul
of Epeius, the son of Panopeus, entered into the nature of an
arts-and-crafts woman. Far off in the rear he saw the soul of
the buffoon Thersites clothing itself in the body of an ape. And
it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and
came to make its choice, and from memory of its former toils
having attained surcease of ambition, went about for a long
time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his

REPUBLIC

257

own business, and with difficulty found it lying in some corner
disregarded by the others, and said when it saw it that it would
have done the same had it drawn the first lot, and chose it glad¬
ly. And in like manner, of the other beasts some entered into
men and into one another, the unjust into wild creatures, the
just transformed to tame, and there was every kind of mixture
and combination.

But when, to make a long story short, all the souls had chosen
their lives in the order of their lots, they were marshaled and
went before Lachesis. And she sent with each as the guardian
of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius that he had
chosen. This divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her
hand and her turning of the spindle to ratify the destiny of his
lot and choice, and after contact with her the genius again led
the soul to the spinning of Atropos to make the web of its des¬
tiny irreversible, and then without a backward look it passed
beneath the throne of Necessity. And after he had passed
through that, when the others also had passed, they all jour¬
neyed to the plain of oblivion, through a terrible and stifling
heat, for it was bare of trees and all plants; and there they
camped at eventide by the river of forgetfulness, whose waters
no vessel can contain. They were all required to drink a meas¬
ure of the water, and those who were not saved by their good
sense drank more than the measure, and each one as he drank
forgot all things. And after they had fallen asleep and it was
the middle of the night, there was a sound of thunder and a
quaking of the earth, and they were suddenly wafted thence,
one this way, one that, upward to their birth like shooting stars.
Er himself, he said, was not allowed to drink of the water, yet
how and in what way he returned to the body he said he did not
know, but suddenly recovering his sight he saw himself lying on
the funeral pyre.

And so, Glaucon, the tale was saved, as the saying is, and was
not lost. And it will save us if we believe it, and we shall safely
cross the river of Lethe, and keep our soul unspotted from the
world. But if we are guided by me, we shall believe that the
soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good
and evil, and so we shall hold ever to the upward way and pur-

On Charm. 161 B
620 D

620 E
617 E

Phaedo 113 D

Laws 960 C

621 A

621 B

Phil. 14 A 4
Laws 645 B
Theaet 164 D 9
621 C
496 DE
Gorg 526 DE

WHAT PLATO SAID

Laws 693 B 4
621 D
465 D (Loeb)

258

sue righteousness with wisdom always and ever, that we may be
dear to ourselves and to the gods both during our sojourn here
and when we receive our reward, as the victors in the games go
about to gather in theirs. And thus both here and in that jour¬
ney of a thousand years, whereof I have told you, we shall fare
well.

CRATYLUS

Etymology, said Voltaire, is a science in which vowels count
for nothing and consonants for very little, and Plato said some- 393 r>
thing like it before him. Acting on this principle, Plato in the ^cd
Cratylus parodies the etymological speculations of his day,
makes punning etymologies the vehicle of numerous Platonic
thoughts and fancies, suggests sound principles of the science of
language by means of outrageous etymologies, illustrates how
the testimony of language can be forced to support alternately
the Pleraclitean philosophy of flux and change or the Parmeni- a.
dean philosophy of rest and stability, decides in consequence
that we must know things themselves before we can safely use 440 c
words to prove their nature, and concludes with a hint that his
own theory of ideas offers the surest refuge from the disintegrat- 440 cd
ing and inapprehensible stream of change, which the partisans
of the flux transfer from their own minds to nature and from 411 bc
nature to their minds. Etymological punning or symbolism re¬
curs in several other dialogues as a feature of style and method.

The tendency only culminates in the Cratylus , in which it runs
rampant but is obviously not to be taken seriously. In this re¬
spect it resembles the more serious method of diaeresis or logical
division, which is employed moderately and rationally in many
dialogues, but is systematically and playfully exaggerated in
the Sophist and Politicus. This is about all that we need to
know in order to understand the Cratylus , but speculative phi¬
lology seeks to know much more. It tries to discover much more
than the tradition tells us of the personalities of Hermogenes,
Cratylus, and Euthyphro, and of the tendencies in contem¬
porary thought that Plato may intend them to symbolize or
satirize. It searches later Greek etymological lexicons for paral¬
lels that may point to the sources of the etymologies which
Socrates propounds. It makes use of the statistics of style to
determine the precise date of the dialogue and then tries to corre¬
late this date with the stage in the evolution of Plato’s philoso¬
phy which it discovers there. Some of these questions will be ex-

26o

WHAT PLATO SAID

amined elsewhere. Our present concern is rather to study the
literary structure of the dialogue and the almost farcical humor
which associates it with the Euthydemus , to observe the wealth
of suggestions and ideas that make it, again like the Euthy¬
demus > a testimony to the unity of Plato's thought, and to take
note of the fact that, whether early or late, it shows Plato “al¬
ready” in possession of many of the principles which he elabo¬
rates more fully in the Theaetetus and the Sophist.

383 a Hermogenes and Cratylus have been disputing and refer
their debate to Socrates. Cratylus maintains that there is and
390 a must be a natural fitness of names to things among Greeks and
cf. 427 d barbarians. He cannot or will not define his meaning further,
but is humorously certain that Hermogenes, who always loses
383 B-384 a on his investments, is no son of Hermes, the god of trade, though
all men should call him so. What is Socrates' opinion about “the
384 b rightness of names”? Socrates repeats with a variation his fa¬
vorite proverb, “Fair or fine things are hard — to find out.” If
he had heard Prodicus' fifty-drachma course of lectures he
would be completely informed. But as he could afford only the
one-drachma course, he can only profess his willingness to join
384 cd in a search for “the truth.” Hermogenes has never been able to
convince himself that names rest on any other basis than con¬
vention and agreement. We are as free to change the names of
things as we are to give new names to our servants, and what-
385 a ever we call a thing is its name. Socrates tests the theory by
the extreme case: Is the name which any individual gives to a
thing as valid as that by which the whole city calls it? Is there
385 bc such a thing as true and false speech? And may names, the
smallest “parts of speech,” be likewise true or false? And, if
what anyone calls a thing is its name, may it have as many
385 d names as anyone gives it?

Meno 74 ab Hermogenes, unmoved, maintains his thesis, and Socrates com-

385 e pares it to Protagoras' thesis that all things are relative since
Theaet. 152 a man is the measure of all things. Does Hermogenes believe

that? He is in doubt, and Socrates provisionally disposes of the
Theaet. 161 de Protagorean paradox by an argument elaborated in the Theac-
unity, pP. 67 f. tetus , that it is incompatible with our belief that one man is
386 a-c wiser or better than another. Hermogenes is also quite willing

386 d to reject the opposite paradox of Euthydemus that everything

CRATYLUS

261

both is and is not at the same time. Things, then, have stable
natures of their own, independent of us. Now actions are a kind
of thing and speech is a form of action, and hence if we are to
speak rightly we must speak in accordance with the nature of
speech. Language — the name — is a tool. Socrates presses the
analogy. The weaver uses a tool provided by a craftsman, the
smith, who knows the art of making it. So the teacher uses the
tool of language transmitted by the rule of custom and created
by the imposer or maker of names — the rarest of craftsmen. If
a tool is broken the craftsman who replaces it does not copy it
but fixes his eye on the natural type or idea, the tool in itself.
His task is to put this type or idea into the appropriate material,
iron or wood as the case may be. He doesn’t use the same iron,
but if he reproduces the type, the form, the idea, the tool is
right, alike among Greeks and barbarians. The judge of its
rightness is the user. And similarly the user of names, who sure¬
ly is the dialectician, he who knows how to ask and answer ques¬
tions, is the judge of the work of the lawgiver who imposes
names. There must be, then, some rightness of names, which it
remains for us to learn. The best way to learn would be to pay
fees and gratitude to the Sophists, but as we are poor we must
search for ourselves. Perhaps we may start from a line of Ho¬
mer, who says that the gods call the river Xanthus, but men
Scamander. Or if the gods are too high for us, take the case of
Hector’s son whom the men in Homer called Astyanax, but the
women Scamandrius. The men surely knew best, and Homer
hints the reason for the name. It was because his father ruled
Troy. So the name Hector itself means “holder” or “possessor.”

We are on the trail of Homer’s idea of the rightness of
names. We expect all creatures to breed true. The offspring of
a lion will normally be called a lion or by some variation that
preserves the essence of the thing, that is, the meaning. Letters
are our “elements,” and the expert may deal with them as the
druggist colors drugs so that the layman fails to perceive essen¬
tial identities. We may put in and take out letters provided we
preserve the essence. Hector and Astyanax have only the one
letter t in common, but the meaning is the same. A list of ety¬
mologies illustrating this principle follows, on which Hermo-
genes’ comment is that Socrates seems inspired. Socrates at-

386 E

Theaet. 155 E 5

387 B
387C

388 A

389 AB

389

389 E

390 A
390 B

390 C

391 AB

On Charm. 158 D

391 E

392 B

II. 6. 402-3
392 C

392 D

393 AB

Re,to4ebS,A8

393 D

394 A

Laws 660 A

393 D

394 B

395 A

396 D

WHAT PLATO SAID

Cf. 399 A
Phaedr. 241 DE
238 CD

397 A 5 ff.
On Laws 681 C

397 B
397 C
Cf. 438 C

397 CD

398 B
398 D
400 D

400 D

401 B

On Phaedo 70 C
Phaedr. 270 A 1

401 D

402 A
401 E

Meno 72 A, Rep.
574 D
409 C

409 E f.

414 C
421 D
425 E

418 C 1

262

tributes this afflatus to Euthyphro, with whom he had talked
that morning. He will abandon himself to the infection and
purify himself tomorrow. Now he will follow out the type upon
which they have stumbled and which seems to indicate that
names are not accidental but have some kind of rightness —
however misleading they may sometimes be, as, e.g., when im¬
posed as the expression of a prayer or a hope. Perhaps some
names were imposed by some more-than-human power. We
may begin with the names of the gods. The ancients, like the
barbarians today, believed in the divinity of the sun, moon, and
the heavenly bodies, and so theos itself is derived from thein^ to
run, expressing their motion. Daemons are daemones — knowing
— heroes are rhetors and lovers (erotic). Another ingenious, too
ingenious, list of etymologies follows — to 400 C. Hermogenes
begs Socrates to return to the names of the gods. Socrates
shrinks from that with Herodotean real or affected unction. If
we have any sense at all, the one fairest way to speak of them
is to say that we know nothing of the gods or of the names by
which they call themselves which must necessarily be right.
And the next best thing is to invoke them as we do in our pray¬
ers by whatsoever names they may prefer. But he makes a
start as custom bids with Hestia. The original namegivers were
no ordinary men, but meteorologists and masters of wise patter.
Hestia, for example, is an equivalent of ousia , as the dialectic
form essian and our use of estin , “it is,” for anything that has
ousia prove. It is derived from othein “to thrust,” and indicates
the belief of the namegivers in the principle of Heraclitus that
all things move and flow. We have struck a very hive, a swarm
of wisdom. It looks as if names in general had been imposed to
illustrate this theory. After several more etymologies of the
names of gods, a “dithyrambic” etymology of Selene the moon
proves that the namegivers anticipated Anaxagoras’ recent the¬
ory that the moon has its light from the sun. Some examples
are given of the principles that words ultimately taken from
the barbarians cannot be explained by Greek etymologies and
that the older Greek words are so mutilated and disguised by
time as to be almost unrecognizable. The speech of women
sometimes preserves the older forms.

In 410 C he enters upon the etymologies of ethical and psycho-

CRATYLUS

263

logical terms and the systematic application of the philosophy 4ns
of Heraclitus to language. The ancients, like our wise men of 4hbc
today, grew dizzy contemplating the flux of things and did not
blame themselves and the turmoil within for this, but thought onPhaedopoD
that there was nothing stable and fixed in the nature of things.

So they made all words of good meaning imply motion and the
fostering of motion, and all terms of disparagement suggest re¬
pose and the checking or thwarting of the stream of change. 411-21

And what is the natural rightness of the ultimate rootwords 422 a
on which all these etymologies depend? The rightness of ele¬
mentary words must rest on the same principle as the rightness
of their derivatives. All names must express somehow the na- 422 cd
ture of the things named. If we had no speech, we would imi- 422 e.
tate things by signs and gestures. A name must indicate them
by articulate sounds, not by barking like a dog and crowing like 423 c
a cock but by imitating in letters and syllables the essence of 423 e
everything of which we use the verb “to be” and say that it is.

The namegiver, the lawgiver of whom we spoke, is the artist 424 a
who can do this with names. He will first divide and classify 388E-389A
the letters, the “elements” of which names are to be formed, ^ £D
the vowels and consonants, the surds and sonants, and likewise
look for the classes, the forms, the species of the entities to 424 d
which he is to apply names. Then as painters use now one color,
now another, and now a mixture to imitate the likeness of a 424 e
man, so he will compose of elemental letters nouns and verbs, Rep. 501 b
and then, by the art of naming or rhetoric, or whatever we 42s a
please to call it, construct the great and beautiful totality of a HiPP. Maj. 304 a
speech or discourse. That was the procedure of the ancients Phiieb. 16 c
who invented language, and that, however difficult, is the only Phaedr. 244 b 7
right and scientific method to examine and criticize their work.

Plato protests that his science of language here, as his 425 c
science of nature in the Timaeus, is only a probable tale, only onTim. 29 bc
the opinions of men. Truth in such obscure matters is reserved on Laws 641 d
for the gods. He adds, like Aristotle, speaking of astronomy or
biology, that even a little knowledge is precious and worth
while. Absurd as the imitation of essences by letters may seem,
it is our only resource, unless we prefer, like embarrassed trage¬
dians, to bring in the deus ex macliina to loosen the knot, and 425 d
say that the gods imposed the first names — or resort to the eva- 426 a

264

WHAT PLATO SAID

426 B
On Soph. 219 A

426 C

426 E

427 E

428 A

428 C
428 D

On Lysis 214 E

428 E
On Soph. 219 A

429 A

429 B

429 D

429 E

430 A

Theaet. 193-94
430 B
430 D
Soph. 263 AB

430 E

sions already suggested, that they were borrowed from the bar¬
barians or that they have been altered beyond recognition in
the course of time. But anyone who claims to deal scientifically
with language must first and chiefly clarify his ideas about the
words on which all others depend. And there is no other in¬
telligible explanation of these except the natural adaptation of
the sound of letters, or of their formation by our organs, to
meanings. Anticipating modern speculations in this kind, Soc¬
rates offers some concrete illustrations of the force of the letters
rho, iota, sigma, delta, gamma, etc. Rho, for example, is the
organ of all movement; iota is a thin sound that can slip in and
out through everything. He asks Cratylus if this way of ex¬
planation satisfies him. Cratylus and Socrates agree that cer¬
tainty is beyond their reach, but Cratylus is satisfied with Soc¬
rates’ oracles, whether inspired by Euthyphro or some Muse.

But Socrates, as usual, just when the problem seems to
be solved, is assailed by importunate doubts. To be self-deceived
is the worst of all deceptions, for the deceiver is always with
you. Words are instruments for teaching things. That teaching
is an art or science. But there are poor artists in every art.
Some of the original namegivers may have been mistaken about
the nature of things and so have imposed names wrongly.
Cratylus rejects this. A bad law is no law. A mistaken name is
no name. And from this he advances to the familiar fallacy that
there is no such thing as speaking falsely because you cannot say
the thing that is not — in other words, nothing. Plato postpones
the explicit logical analysis of this fallacy to the Sophist . But
his ridicule of it in the Euthydemus and the common sense with
which he disposes of it here show that he understood the matter
perfectly. Cratylus stubbornly resists. You cannot speak, say,
pronounce, or utter what is false. You can only agitate your
organs and make a noise. Socrates, employing a method which
recurs in the Theaetetus , argues that just as we can assign a pic¬
ture to the right or wrong object, so there may be a rightness
or a wrongness in the application of words. In the case of
words, right means true and wrong means false. Cratylus de¬
murs. There may be error in pictures but not in names. And
Socrates presses his illustration more explicitly. I can point
your eyes to the wrong picture and say, “That is your picture,”

CRATYLUS

265

or I can pronounce for your ears the wrong name and say,
“That is your name.’> What is the difference? Cratylus yields,
to the relief of Socrates, who says, “This is not the time to de¬
bate that issue to a finish. " We may then no more expect all
names to be perfect likenesses than all pictures. Cratylus again
objects. If you change some letters in writing a name you can¬
not say that you have written the name badly. You haven't
written it at all. That may be true of numerical aggregates,
Socrates distinguishes. Ten isn't ten at all if you take one away
from it. But that is not true of qualities and likenesses. If we
require the likeness or imitation to be perfect, it will no longer
be a likeness but a double of the thing. It is of the nature of a
likeness that we perceive that it falls short of the reality. If we
are not to approach the truth of things in the manner of certain
“late learners," we must admit that the name cannot be the
double of the thing. It is enough that it approximately renders
the type or the outline. Cratylus will not contend but is still
unconvinced. And Socrates patiently explains again. There
could be no pictures if colors had not a natural likeness to ob¬
jects. We can conceive of no rational explanation of language
except on the hypothesis that elementary letters in some way
imitate the essences of things. The alternative is to admit Her-
mogenes' view that language is a purely arbitrary convention.

Cratylus must join Socrates and Hermogenes in testing
the hypothesis. The letter lambda we said expresses smooth¬
ness and softness. But in the word sclerotes , “hardness," it helps
to express the contrary. “That," objects Cratylus, “is merely
habit." “But what is habit but convention?" Meaning in that
case is conveyed by its opposite. A symbol can express its oppo¬
site only by the principle of convention, which we have to admit
side by side with reason, just as in the interpretation of nature
we are compelled to recognize an admixture of necessity with
design. Cratylus' silence is taken for consent. The far-fetched
and strained etymologies to which the uncompromising pursuit
of the principle of likeness commits us compel us to recognize
this cheap and vulgar principle of convention in the formation
of language. But what do names do for us? What is their force
and function? They teach us things. But if the original name-
giver made mistakes, they will mislead us. It is not safe just to

431 a

On Charm. 169 1)

431 C

432 A

432 CD

433 B

432 E

433 C

434 B

433 E
Cf. 385 A

434 BC

434 E

Phaedo 74 A

Tim. 48 A
43S B 4
435 C 4

Ar. De an. 405 b
26

436 BC

266

WHAT PLATO SAID

436 CD

Phaedo 101 D

Crito 48 E

437 A-C

437 D

438 B
438 C

Cf. 397 C

439 C

439 D

440 B
Theaet. 157 A,
166 BC

follow words. Cratylus falls back on his old contention that a
mistaken name is no name at all. And he argues that the con¬
sistency with which names point to the Heraclitean flux proves
that they must be right. Consistency in this case proves noth¬
ing, replies Socrates. If the original hypothesis was wrong, all
that follows may have been forced into harmony with it as in a
geometrical demonstration from a wrong diagram.' This princi¬
ple of method does not really contradict the Phaedo where con¬
tradiction in the consequences of a hypothesis is a reason for
choosing another hypothesis. It is not there meant that agree¬
ment in the consequences is in itself a proof that the hypothesis
is sound, still less that we should not, as here admonished, exer¬
cise the greatest care in the adoption of a hypothesis. But the
emphasis in the Phaedo is on the point that we must not, like
eristics, argue at the same time about the hypothesis and its
consequences. And, in fact, many etymologies of which Socra¬
tes gives examples seem to accord with the opposite Parmenid-
ean philosophy of stability and rest. Cratylus surely does not
think that the truth is to be determined by a majority vote.

Again, if names are the sole teachers of things, how did the first
namegivers learn about things? Perhaps the first namegivers
were the gods. Would gods have made them signify contrary
philosophies? But the names of one of the series are not names
at all, insists the obstinate Cratylus. To which Socrates replies
again that a majority proves nothing. Language, he admits,
does seem to support the flowing philosophy. But that, as we
have already seen, may be because the creators of language
transferred to things their own inner confusion, and seek to
plunge us and all things into the eddies in which they themselves
are whirling round and round. But suppose my dream were
true, and that the beautiful and the good exist, not a beautiful
face but beauty itself, and so with all other entities. Do these
perpetually move and change? If they did we could not predi¬
cate any quality of them, not even a that or a so. For while we
pronounce the predicate the thing has changed. But that which
always abides unchanged never goes out from, never departs
from, its own form. If it were always changing, not only could it
not be known, but there would be no such thing as the knower
and the known. But if these entities of which we speak exist,

CRATYLUS

267

then the flux of Heraclitus is not the law of all existence, for it
does not apply to them. This is not an easy question to decide.
But no man of sense will abandon himself to the testimony of
words and their inventors, and putting his faith in them pass
condemnation on the nature of things that it is like a leaky pot
or a man afflicted with the flux. Perhaps that is so, and then
again perhaps it is not. It behooves us to pursue the inquiry
energetically and bravely now or hereafter.

The Cratylus again shows how idle it is to try to determine the
purpose of a Platonic dialogue by a single conjectured design in
Plato’s mind. The main theme of the Cratylus is obviously the
relation of language to thought and reality, with much inci¬
dental parody and satire of contemporary speculations on the
origin and nature of words. But it is also a discussion of the
flowing philosophy of Heraclitus and his philosophers from a
different point of view than its application to psychology in the
Theaetetus. The conclusion points directly to the theory of tran¬
scendental ideas as the only escape from the flux. That was al¬
ways Plato’s opinion, and it is in a quite intelligible sense still
true today. If any critic chooses to affirm that this conclusion
or the idea that we must learn things from things not from
words was for Plato the real purpose of the dialogue, it is as im¬
possible to refute his opinion as it is for him to prove it, but a
mere opinion it remains. The Cratylus confirms the unity of
Plato’s thought by the distinct affirmation and the distinctive
terminology of the theory of ideas, as also by its “anticipation”
of the arguments of the Theaetetus. It will be said that there are
differences. Of course there are. The emphasis, the perspective,
the point of view, vary with the subject from dialogue to dia¬
logue, and Plato could not be expected to repeat himself ver¬
batim. Such differences may sometimes be significant of actual
developments in Plato’s opinions. But to rest the interpretation
of the dialogues on the presumption that they must always be
that is to commit one’s self in advance to systematic misinter¬
pretation. There is no such presumption. It is quite fantastic,
for example, to maintain that in the Symposium Plato recog¬
nizes only one idea, the Idea of Beauty; that in the Cratylus he
still only dreams of the doctrine, or is thinking of concepts, not

440 c

440 CD

268

WHAT PLATO SAID

On 440 B

ideas; and that in the Phacdo at last the theory is fully de¬
veloped. What possible philosophic meaning could attach to the
hypostatization of one idea? And anyone with a feeling for Pla¬
tonic style must recognize that the tentative and hesitating
language of the last two pages of the Cratylus is playful and
ironic. Plato has no more doubts than he always had as to the
issue between the relativity of the flowing philosophy and the
stability of the absolute ideas. It is the great problem of Tenny¬
son's Two V oices , or of Plato's Timaeus in contrast with Lucre¬
tius' Dererum natura. The ideas, as he says in the Republic and
the Parmenides , are hard to accept and hard to reject. But the
dubitative language of the Cratylus is in the manner of a Ruskin
or Carlyle satirizing materialistic and ‘Vibratory" philosophies.
Perhaps it is so, and then again perhaps it is not. The irony is
that of Matthew Arnold, who, in the face of the formidable as¬
sertiveness of the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, and the Spencers,
would wish to express himself as a being of dim vision and
limited faculties. Lastly, the Cratylus , as the notes on this re¬
sume partly show, like the Euthydemus and in a minor degree the
little Euthyphro , is an abbreviated repertory of thoughts and
classifications that seem to have been a part of Plato's perma¬
nent store.

THEAETETUS

It is arguable that the Theaetetus is the richest in thought of
all the Platonic dialogues. The psychological problems that it
raises are still hotly debated, and the interpretation of the
Theaetetus itself remains in the forefront of the discussion. But
philological interpretations of the dialogue miss the main point
that its theme is psychological and that the logical problems
whose practical solution is reserved for the Sophist are here just
glanced at episodically and with conscious humor. With this
we are not now chiefly concerned, but rather with its composi¬
tion and structure regarded as the framework and the setting of
the thought.

Euclid of Megara, meeting Terpsion, tells him that he has
just accompanied to the harbor the fine man Theaetetus, being
conveyed sick and wounded to Athens from the battle of Cor¬
inth. Euclid remembers Socrates’ prediction of Theaetetus’ fu¬
ture eminence. He has notes of a conversation between Socra¬
tes, Theodorus, and Theaetetus, which on a visit to Athens he
took down from Socrates’ account of it and corrected and ampli¬
fied on subsequent visits. Elis “boy” will read it, if Terpsion so
desires. It is written in purely dramatic form to avoid the tire¬
some repetitions of “said I” and “said he” in the narrative form.

The dialogue follows. The scene is, as in the Charmides , an
Athenian palaestra, which, however, is not pictured as there.
Socrates questions Theodorus of Cyrene, an elderly mathema¬
tician, the teacher of Theaetetus, what youths of promise he has
met at Athens. Theodorus praises Theaetetus in language which
recalls the description of the ideal student in the Republic. Pie is
a fortunate blend of the quick-witted, but usually quick-tem¬
pered and unballasted type and the more stable temperament,
whose stability turns to sluggishness in the labors of the mind.
But his mind works with an unfaltering smoothness and effi¬
ciency that can only be compared to the gentle, silent flow of a
stream of olive oil. Theodorus does not remember the name of
the boy’s father, but points the boy out to Socrates, and with

269

142 AB

143 C
143 A

Lysis 21 1 AB

Meno 82 B
Rep. 327 B 3
143 BC

143 D ff.

M3 D

146 B, 183 D
Charm. 153 D

144 AB

144 BC

WHAT PLATO SAID

144 D
144 E

US A
On Laches 184
DE

14S B
Charm. 154 E
145 CD

146 A

Sisyph. 387 D 7
146 B

But cf. Rep^ 539
Rep- 53i DE
Rep. 536 CD

146 CD
On Meno 71 E
Laches 190 E
Meno 72 B f.

146 E

Laches 191 DE

147 A
147 C

147 CDE

Phileb. 16 CDE

148 AB
Laws 819 E 10 ff.

148 B

148 E

On Laches 181 A

27O

the familiarity of a teacher bids him “come here” to meet Socra¬
tes. Socrates leads off in the manner of the earlier dialogues.
Theodoras has likened the snubnose of Socrates to that of The-
aetetus. But Theodorus is not a painter, an expert in likenesses.
He is an intellectual expert, a geometrician, and an astronomer,
and his praise of Theaetetus’ soul, therefore, merits our atten¬
tion and requires us to verify it by examining Theaetetus. From
Theodorus, Theaetetus learns geometry, astronomy, and the
like, which are forms of wisdom or science or knowledge. What
is knowledge? That is what Socrates would like to know.
Can any of the company tell him? He hopes he is not im¬
portunate in urging them to play this game. Theodorus thinks
dialectics a more suitable game for youth. He is a mathe¬
matician and too old to learn this new trick. Theaetetus,
therefore, is to be the respondent. He, as happens in the mi¬
nor dialogues, at first offers instances or examples in place of
a definition. Science or knowledge is geometry, and the other
sciences, cobbling and the other arts. Socrates, as in the minor
dialogues, explains the nature of a definition. He does not wish
to enumerate items, but to define the thing itself, and exempli¬
fies his meaning by defining clay not as potters’ and imagists’
and brickmakers’ clay, but as earth kneaded up with water.
Theaetetus’ training in mathematics enables him to grasp the
point readily. He and a friend (the “young” Socrates) had re¬
cently generalized into a definition and a formula some exam¬
ples which Theodorus had given them of integers and incom¬
mensurable quantities and their roots. Since numbers (powers
or roots) are infinite, they tried to grasp them in a unity. They
divided all such numbers into two classes, and called those that
can be produced by the multiplication of equals square, and
those that cannot, oblong. This slight generalization is the point.
It is a mistake to read profound mathematical meanings into
the passage, though it does suggest the idea of incommensura¬
bility.

But for all that and despite Socrates’ praise, Theaetetus is
unable to say what knowledge is. He has tried before, having
heard of Socrates’ questions. But he is unable to answer the
question or desist from puzzling his head about it. His mind is
in travail, Socrates replies, because it is pregnant. Socrates can

THEAETETUS

271

help him, for he is the son of a midwife and practices his moth¬
er’s profession on the mind, not on the body. After considerable
elaboration of this comparison or allegory, of which interpreters
possibly make too much, Theaetetus responds to Socrates’ ex¬
hortation to say boldly what he thinks and submit it to test, by
hazarding the opinion that knowledge is nothing else but sensa¬
tion or awareness. Socrates at once identifies this proposition
with Protagoras’ doctrine of relativity and his formula, “Man is
the measure of all things.” It is further, Socrates says, akin to
the Heraclitean philosophy of universal motion and change,
which can be traced back to Homer’s Ocean, the father of all
things, and Tethys their mother. Socrates develops all the con¬
sequences of this theory with a gusto and an Aristophanic zest
which mislead some modern critics into thinking that it was
Plato’s real opinion, while others maintain that in spite of his
unfair polemics he has stated or quoted the case of Protagoras so
strongly that he is unable to answer it.

The philosophy of common sense, the Protagoreans would
say, leads to hopeless contradictions. A thing cannot become
greater or less without changing, yet six dice are more than four,
and less than twelve, and Socrates, whose height has not
changed, is taller this year and will be shorter next year than
Theaetetus, who is growing.

The Protagorean solution of this puzzle is going to be that
there is no thing, or that every changing relation makes it a new
and different thing. The explanation in the Phaedo is that the
idea of tallness is present with Socrates this year and the idea of
shortness next year. These explanations do not, as modern crit¬
ics say, illustrate the primitive quality and the inadequate logic
of Plato’s thought. On the contrary, they are examples of his
amazing ability to translate any idea into the terminology of any
system and conduct the argument in these terms. Pie states
everything alternately in terms of the reason and of the physical
cause, but never mixes them.

Reserving further discussion of these problems, we note now
only that Theaetetus is dazed with wondering at them and Soc¬
rates, in an endlessly quoted and commented passage, tells him
that such wonder is the parent of philosophy, as Hesiod already
hinted when he made Iris the child of Thaumas.

149-50

151 d

Charm. 160 E 1

151 E

152 A

Cratyl. 439-40
Tim. 49-50
Parmen. 163-64
152 E

II. 14. 201, 302

152 D
153-54

155 AB ff.

166 B

158 E

159 CD
102 C

155 CD

155 D

Theog. 265, 780

272

WHAT PLATO SAID

155 E ff.
Cratyl. 386 E 7

156-57

157 A

157 B

183 B

157 BC

158 ABC

158 E
159 CD

157 C
161 A

163-64
164 C 9

165 BCE

166 A ff.

161 C

171 c

Most of the arguments of modern philosophies of materialism
and relativity are glanced at. But Plato is careful to distinguish
crude materialism, which recognizes only what can be grasped
with the hands and denies all reality to actions, generations, and
the invisible, from the subtler “mysteries” of the psychological
idealists. These argue that all things are change and motion,
and the so-called object is only a momentary eddy in the flux,
the instant of contact of the motions from within and the mo¬
tions without. The object and the subject are alike possibili¬
ties of sensation, and neither exists apart from or before this
momentary contact. We ought as far as possible to eschew all
the conventional static expressions that imply existence and
permanency and make language as free-flowing, inconsecutive,
and dynamic as experience. The theory holds not only for all
particular perceptions of sensations and qualities, but for those
collections or aggregations of qualities which we call “things.”
It is further confirmed by the impossibility of proving that the
perceptions or fancies of waking and health are more true than
those of disease and dreams. Consistently carried out, the theo¬
ry explains all the logical difficulties that it raises. Any change
in the composition or proportion or relations of the qualities that
constitute a “thing” makes it a different thing as a whole and
therefore a wholly different thing. Socrates sick and Socrates
well are distinct entities, and hence the sweet is sweet to the one
and sour to the other.

Theaetetus and Theodorus cannot make out whether Socra¬
tes speaks in jest or in earnest; and modern critics in like case
are further baffled by his first attacking the doctrine with obvi¬
ous fallacies and then conjuring up the ghost of Protagoras to
protest against this mistreatment and to restate his theory so
effectively that it has become today a classical text of modern
pragmatism. The first objection is not a fallacy. Why did not
Protagoras say “A dog-faced baboon is the measure of all
things” ? This is coarsely put in Plato's irritation, but is a legiti¬
mate retort upon relativity, whether taken as ultimate meta¬
physics or as a polemical antidote to dogmatism. If there is no
other truth than the immediate sense of the individual, why, as
Plato seriously adds, make man the standard rather than any
sentient creature? The explicit statement of the argument in

THEAETETUS

V 3

this form by Plato deprives of all base the conjecture that the
“dog-faced baboon” is not Plato’s own expression but is his sat¬
ire on the coarseness of Antisthenes.

More apparently serious is the argument that if every man
is the measure of his own wisdom, no one need go to school to 161 de
Protagoras; and that the testing of one another’s opinions by Euthyd. 287 a9
dialectic becomes a piece of elaborate and egregious folly if the
Truth of Protagoras is true and he was not mocking us from the 162 a
inner shrine of his book. Protagoras’ supposed protest, how- 162 d
ever, that all this is mere demagogy, and his demand for real
reasons are answered at first, it is true, by outrageous fallacies \t34~cb
which Plato explicitly admits to be such, and then by serious
argument. . 165 a

The fallacies are justifiable only as urged against a crude
literal identification of sensation with knowledge. So thefalla- 165 d
cies of the Gorgias are fair answers to the literal identification of
pleasure and the good, which Callicles at first maintains and Gorg. 499B
then abandons. In both cases they are withdrawn as soon as
their purpose is served. In the Theaetetus these fallacies are fur¬
ther answered by the speech of an imaginary Protagoras con¬
jured up from the other world to defend his theory. The sub- 166
stance of his argument humorously translated into the language
of the theory is that every creature is limited to its own percep- 166 D-i67
tions. One opinion cannot be more true than another, but it may
be better, more salutary. Teaching is therefore still possible.

The teacher, the wise man, substitutes salutary and helpful 167 bc
opinions for opinions that are deleterious and destructive. Apart
from ultimate metaphysics, this is virtually the modern pragma¬
tist’s demand that we suppress the idea and the name of truth
and falsehood in language and thought and substitute “that
which works or profits”; and apart from metaphysics the prac¬
tical answer to such paradoxes, and Plato’s answer in effect, is
that it is idle or impossible to suppress distinctions which the
common sense of mankind has always found useful, and which
are so ingrained in language that even those who reject them
cannot eschew them in their own speech and thought. Modern
pragmatists take note chiefly of the strength and validity of this
apology in respect of the relativity of the immediate perceptions SymP. 206-7,
of sense, which Plato is willing to concede provisionally for the I7*°c A

274

WHAT PLATO SAID

Tim. 49 D ff.
Si A

On 161 A

167 A

167 C
Rep. 338 C-9 A
Gorg. 483 ff.

On 161 A

168-69

170-71

171 E

172 AB
172 B

argument’s sake, though he feels a strong distaste for the rheto¬
ric that harps on it. They overlook two points which show that
Plato attributes to Protagoras further reasonings which he could
not possibly approve. It is arguable, but there is no evidence,
that this is an injustice to the historical Protagoras. But that
hypothesis has no bearing on Plato’s opinion or on the problem
as Plato presents it. Protagoras is represented as supporting his
theory by the fallacy, which Plato never took seriously, that
not-being is nothing and we cannot say the thing which is not.
He is further made to affirm the thesis of Thrasymachus and
Callicles that justice is only what seems just to the temporary
rulers of the state — their own security and advantage. No
speech which contains these two propositions can represent
Plato’s own opinions.

In a little dramatic interlude that relieves the severity of this
argument Socrates insists that Theodorus shall take the place
of the boy Theaetetus in the more serious refutation of Protag¬
oras that is to follow. The first argument advanced by Socrates
is the so-called peritrope , to use the later technical term, that
the opinion of Protagoras destroys itself, for, if truth is what
each man troweth, and the majority of mankind in fact repudi¬
ate Protagoras’ definition of truth, it is on Protagoras’ own
pragmatic showing more often false than true. This looks too
much like a trap or trick of logic to be convincing, and Plato
does not dwell upon it. Yet it is a legitimate objection to the
imposition of the Protagorean and pragmatic conception of
truth upon ordinary speech and thought. Whatever our dis¬
taste for dogmatism, truth for the ordinary man means some¬
thing more than his own or his neighbor’s present individual im¬
pression or opinion, and it is futile to try to banish that some¬
thing more from thought, speech, and experience.

The more serious argument is that present opinion, unless it
is that of the scientific expert, cannot be the criterion of the fu¬
ture. Men may assert if they please that as hot is only what I
feel to be hot, so justice and piety are only what the state
affirms to be just and pious, but when it comes to good, benefit,
future utility, they will not acquiesce in the semblance but want
the reality. This is the form that the theory of relativity as¬
sumes when not pushed to extremes. And this opens to us an-

THEAETETUS

275

other long discussion which, having leisure, we are free to under¬
take. For unlike lawyers and petty politicians, the philosopher
has leisure to follow the argument whithersoever it leads him.
Such is in the Greek the obvious though sometimes misunder¬
stood transition to the eloquent digression that describes by way
of relief to all this dialectic the two contrasted types which are
similarly opposed to one another in hardly less eloquent pas¬
sages of the Gorgicis and the Republic . No summary can do jus¬
tice to it. It must be read entire. A scholiast, indeed, avers that
it should be learned by heart.

Those who have dallied too long with philosophy cut a sorry
figure in the courtroom. They are freemen, accustomed to lei¬
sure and liberty to follow the windings of their own thoughts.
But those who have knocked about in courtrooms all their lives
are slaves of the water clock and are fettered by the precise
wording of their pleadings and affidavits. They cannot think
disinterestedly, for the issue is always the main chance or life
itself. This makes them tense and keen and crooked of soul, and
clever in their own conceit. The pressure of dangers and fears
on young and tender minds deprives them of all chance of
straight and wholesome growth. But the philosophic choir — we
speak only of those worthy of the name — from youth up hardly
know the way to the courthouse or the market-place. The fel¬
lowships of gangsters for carrying elections, and midnight revels
with flute-girls have no charms for them even in their dreams.
Knowing nothing of the skeletons in their neighbors closets,
they are tongue-tied in the recriminations of the courtroom.
They are not even aware of their own ignorance; their bodies
only inhabit the city, their minds are ever voyaging through
strange seas of thought alone, scrutinizing and interrogating all
existence. Like Thales, whom the dainty and gracious Thracian
Abigail mocked for falling into a pit while gazing at the stars,
their minds are so preoccupied with the general nature of man
that they are hardly aware of the existence of the man next
door. And so, whether in private conversation or public debate,
their ineptitude provokes the laughter not only of Thracian
maids but of the mob. They are “dumb-bells” who have no
“come-back” because they know no evil. And when others pro¬
nounce encomia, their silly laughter makes them thought ver-

172 CD

172 D-177 C

Gorg. 484-86
Rep. 515-18

Hermann, VI, 243

172 CD
Gorg. 484 D
Rep. 517 D
Laches 196 B

172 E 1
201 B 2

173 A

Rep. 519 A

Euthyd. 307 B 7
Rep. 489 D
496

173 D
Rep. 365 D
Thucyd. 8. 54

On Symp. 176 E

174 c

173 E

Polit. 272 C

174 A

174 c

Rep. 518 B 2

174 D

WHAT PLATO SAID

On Polit. 275 A

Laws 68 1 A

On 172 C
Lav/s 766 A, 808
D; Polit. 292 D

174 D

Rep. 486 A

174 E

175 A

Rep. 515 E-516 A
I7S BC

Gorg. 470 E
Rep. 519 A
175 D

Gorg. 486 B
527 A

On Pliaedo 69 B 7

175 E

176 A
On Meno 86 B

276

itable zanies. For a great monarch seems to them only a shep¬
herd, a swineherd, or a cowherd penned in a hillside corral, con¬
demned to ignorance from lack of leisure, governing the most un¬
manageable and tricky of animals, and counted rich and happy
because he squeezes much milk from his charges. Philosophers
cannot be dazzled by the extent of the tyrant's domain, for
their thought ranges over the whole earth. If any such boasts
of seven rich grandsires or traces his lineage back through twen¬
ty-five generations to Heracles, they laugh at his dim and lim¬
ited vision and the narrowness of mind that cannot realize that
each of us has had myriads of ancestors, Greeks and barbarians,
rich and poor, kings and slaves. And so their mixture of arro¬
gance and naivete furnishes abundant laughter to the multi¬
tude.

But drag one of this multitude up and out from their pleas and
rejoinders of “how I wrong you" and “you me" to the considera¬
tion of right and wrong in themselves, or from the question
whether the Great King is happy to the problem of true king-
ship and human happiness in general, and then that keen little
lawyer-like soul will give the philosopher his revenge. Suspend¬
ed from those dizzying heights and looking down from that un¬
accustomed elevation, dazed, helpless, and stammering, he will
provide laughter not for Thracian maids and the uneducated
who have no perception of his plight, but for all who have been
bred as freemen and not as slaves. Such is the character of each.
The man of liberal breeding and leisure to whom we give the ti¬
tle of “philosopher" or “lover of wisdom" may without dis¬
paragement appear foolish and a nobody when he is summoned
to servile ministrations, for he has no skill to pack up a kit with
neatness and dispatch, or to sweeten a pudding or flavor a
fawning speech. And the other, his counterpart, is deft to per¬
form all such menial services smoothly and readily, but he can¬
not dispose the garb of a freeman about his shoulders like a
gentleman, nor can he find the fitting harmonies of speech to
hymn aright the veritable life of gods and godlike men. The
awe-struck Theodorus thinks that there would be less evil in
the world if all men could be brought to Socrates' way of think¬
ing. But Socrates replies that evil is inevitable, as the opposite
of good. It dwells not with the gods, but haunts this mortal

THEAETETUS

277

nature, and our only escape from it is to become like to God as
far as may be.

The real reason for being just is this, and not, as the many
say, that we may enjoy the reputation of goodness. That saying
is the veritable old wives' drivel. Knowledge of this truth is
the only real wisdon, and all mere cleverness divorced from this
is knavery. We must not concede that unj ust men are wicked, to
be sure, but smart, for they glory in the reproach and think that
we are telling them that they are not vain cumberers of the
earth but real men, who will survive in the struggles of politics.
They believe that the only penalties of wickedness are blows
and death, and they have no conception of the true penalty,
which is to grow like to the pattern of godless evil in the world
and unlike the pattern of the divine, and so to live the life that
conforms to the model that they have copied. Clever as they
deem themselves, we may observe this much, that if ever they
submit to examination of their opinions in private, and consent
to render an account of them, they finally are dissatisfied with
themselves and all their rhetoric droops and withers away and
they are no better than children.

But all this, Socrates concludes, is a digression. Shall we not
return to the argument? Theodorus, like Matthew Arnold and
Professor Wilamowitz and many other modern readers, feels
that for a man of his age these eloquent and edifying reflections
are pleasanter hearing than the severity of dialectic, but he con¬
sents with a sigh. And Socrates picks up the argument at the
precise point where it was dropped. The moderate Protagoreans
affirm that what seems to me is for me in other matters and par¬
ticularly in the matter of justice, but they lack the audacity to
affirm this of the good or the beneficial. Whatever politicians
may say of the relativity of justice, their real purpose in legisla¬
tion is the beneficial. Socrates generalizes this reference of the
good to the future and argues that however it may be with pres¬
ent sensations and impressions, the experts are better judges of
the future. And if men err in this forecast as they surely some¬
times do, then on their own definition their justice is not justice.
And so in other fields. The patient knows whether the room is
hot or cold to him now, but the physician is more likely to know
whether the patient is going to feel fever or chill tomorrow. The
diner knows whether the food tastes good, but the cook’s fore-

176 AB

Rep. 361 A
Phaedo 83 E

On Gorg. 527 AB

176 D

176 E-177 A

Euthyd. 305 D 6
Gorg. 527 AB
On Phaedo 76 B
177 B

177 BC

On Euthyph. n E

172 B6
177 C
177 CD
177 E

178 A

178 BC

WHAT PLATO SAID

278

cast of how the dinner is going to taste is more trustworthy. The
jury feels the persuasiveness of the argument they are hearing,

178 e but Protagoras can more expertly foresee what arguments will
Phaedr. 271 D 5 be persuasive to a jury. Theodorus regards these considerations

179 b as conclusive, though he also thinks the peritrope argument a

sufficient refutation of Protagoras' paradox. There are many
179 C2 other objections to the theory in its application to ethics, Socra¬
tes says. But in respect of present sensations, perhaps, it is
true. Let us test this flowing essence more closely.

This is a shift back to the identification of the Protagorean
relativity with the Heraclitean “all things flow," and for a few
pages Plato repeats and exaggerates into caricature his satire on
the extreme form of this doctrine. His real meaning is that it is
for practical purposes a useless, self-advertising paradox of pseu-
181 a 4 doscience. You cannot argue with the flowing philosophers, for
i79i8o"a their language and their ideas flow like their philosophy, and
you cannot pin them down to any intelligible static statement.

180 c We have to take up ourselves the problem presented by their

paradox, or rather, we find ourselves between the lines in the
180 Ef. game of pull-away, in the battle of paradoxes between the “all
things flow" of Heraclitus and the “all things stand still" of the
Eleatics and Parmenides. The partisans of motion are com¬
mitted to the faith that all things move in both senses of the

182 d word — change of place and change of quality. But this, as al-

183 a ready said in the Cratylus (439 D), makes intelligible speech

and rational thought impossible. The attempted complete elim¬
ination of the static from language and thought destroys coher-
183 b ent connected speech and leaves at the most a jumble of adverbs
183 C2 and ejaculations. The attempt to support relativity by “all

183 d things flow" breaks down. Socrates evades the request for a

similar criticism of the Eleatic paradox that nothing moves, pro-

184 a fessing great respect and awe for Parmenides and fear lest he

misapprehend him. Plato is reserving this topic for the Sophist;
or at any rate he is reserving it, and he personally feels less dis¬
taste for the paradoxes of absolute rest than for those of abso¬
lute motion.

Plere he returns to Theaetetus’ identification of knowledge
with sense-perception. This is finally refuted by an argument
which may be only loosely designated as Kantian. It does sug-

THEAETETUS

279

gest to a modern reader the distinctive Kantian thought that
sense-perception itself contains an intellectual element. Mind,
thought, knowledge, implies a certain central unity (of appercep¬
tion) which the mere juxtaposition of unrelated sensations can¬
not give. It is monstrous to suppose that separate sensations
huddle within us like the Greeks in the wooden horse at Troy,
and do not meet in some unifying centre, call it soul or what
you will. If we are to speak precisely, we do not see with our
eyes or hear with our ears, but through them. And knowledge
resides, not in the mere separate affections of sense, but in the
conceptions common to all the senses and in the thought that
relates them and estimates them in terms of reality and future
benefit. Theaetetus is commended by Socrates for admitting
that these “common” thoughts have no material organ, but that
the mind examines them itself through itself.

The first definition thus disposed of, Theaetetus with some
assistance from Socrates proposes a second. Knowledge is true
opinion. But that suggests to Socrates the old puzzle: What is
false opinion and what is the psychological explanation of error?
How is it possible? From this point on, and indeed from the re¬
sumption of the argument after the digression, the literary in¬
terest of the Theaetetus is less than in the first part. The only
appreciable exceptions are the image of the wax tablets and of
the birds in the aviary employed to illustrate the problem of
error. Apart from these two notable images and their sugges¬
tions for psychology, the style of the second half of the Theaete¬
tus resembles that of the dialectical passages of the Sophist and
Parmenides. This makes it, like parts of the Lysis , Charmidesy
and Gorgias, distasteful to readers who do not care for psycho¬
logical and logical analysis — to Matthew Arnold, for example,
and to Professor Wilamowitz, who explains this aridity by the
hypothesis that we have here not a finished composition, but the
preparatory notes which Plato hastily put together when sum¬
moned away from Athens to Syracuse. There is of course not
the slightest evidence for this fancy, which is supported by a
complete misunderstanding and mistranslation of the page of
transition to the digression. The detailed analysis of this part
of the Theaetetus belongs to a more systematic discussion of
Plato’s metaphysics.

184

184 D

184 C
186 D

186 C 3

185 DE
Phaedo 67 D,

66 A, 65 C
187 B

On Euthyph. 11 E
187 C 4

On Prot. 353 A
187 D

191 C ff.
197 D

Lysis 216 ff.
Charm. 167 ff.

Gorg. 495 C ff.

28o

WHAT PLATO SAID

1 88 C-D
On 167 A
188 A

188 D-189 B

188 A 2-4
188 C 6
188 A

188 D ff.

189 B 12
189 C
On Lysis 214 E

189 E

190 B

190 C
191 AB

191 CD

194 CD

There are two ways of approach to the explanation of error
or false opinion — the practical or logical and the metaphysical
or psychological. Plato himself distinguishes the two approaches
as the method of being and not-being, and the method of know¬
ing and not-knowing. He begins with the method of knowing
and not-knowing, is apparently baffled, devotes a perfunctory
page to being and not-being, a problem which he is reserving for
the Sophist , and returns to various modifications of the method
of knowing and not-knowing. He is clearly conscious of what he
is doing throughout. The first failure of the method of knowing
and not-knowing is due to the deliberate adoption of the unme¬
diated opposition between knowing and not-knowing, the refus¬
al to recognize any intermediate gradations or processes, or the
possibility of both knowing and not-knowing in any sense of the
words. We cannot have the false opinion that Socrates is The-
aetetus if we actually know or do not know either both or nei¬
ther.

After the brief interlude on being and not-being, and the con¬
clusion — to be qualified in the Sophist — that false opinion is
opining things that are not, Socrates returns to the method of
knowing and not-knowing in the guise or disguise of the sugges¬
tion that false opinion is “allodoxy,” the mistaking of one thing
for another. Theaetetus, as usual, eagerly embraces the new
idea, but Socrates, as is his wont, becomes aware of difficulties.
Thought is a discourse of the soul with itself terminating in a
decision or, as the moderns would say, a judgment. Did The¬
aetetus ever say to himself that fair is foul, just unjust, or in
short that one thing is another, one thing is another things Soc¬
rates insists deprecating all wordplay on the idiomatic use of the
Greek word eTepov, “other. ” In his distress and perplexity Soc¬
rates proposes to withdraw the admission that it is impossible
in any sense to know what you don’t know. Perhaps it is possi¬
ble in a sense which may be illustrated by an image. Suppose
that each of us has in his soul a lump or block of wax, the gift of
memory, the mother of the Muses. This supposition will inci¬
dentally account for many of the differences between men’s
minds. The hardness or softness, the purity or impurity, and
the sufficiency or insufficiency of the wax will explain memory,
forgetting, and the confusion of impressions and ideas almost as

THEAETETUS

281

easily as twenty-five hundred years later they will be explained
by softening of the brain, hardening of the arteries, and the
greater or less resistance of the “synapses.” If all perceptions
from without or ideas that we conceive within the mind are im¬
pressed on this wax and remembered so long as the stamp per¬
sists, we can perhaps find an explanation of false opinion. In¬
stead of the bare antithesis “know” and “not-know,” we now
have four terms, “perceive” and “not-perceive,” “know” and
“not know.” And after the puzzling but not really difficult
elimination of all obviously impossible combinations, false opin- 193 bc b.
ion is found to consist in a mistaken relation between things
that we both know and perceive. Perceiving Theodorus and
Theaetetus at a distance, we refer the perception of Theaetetus
to the stamp of Theodorus in the wax, to its footprint, so to c?ltyiC43oE
speak, in order that a recognition of it may take place. 193 c4

Theaetetus welcomes the conclusion with enthusiasm, and 195 b
again the vexatious prattler Socrates, who can never let go of or on phaedo 70 c
have done with any argument, raises an objection. How will 19s c
they account for errors within the mind, errors in pure thought, 195 e
as when we say five and seven are eleven. There can be no ques¬
tion of a wrong relation between perception and knowledge
(memory) there. To meet this difficulty Socrates, as ingenious
as the astronomers who added epicycle to epicycle or as the
twentieth-century physicists who meet every emergency of the
laboratory with a new theory of the atoms, substitutes an aviary 197 c
for his block of wax. Some of the birds are in flocks apart from
the others, some in small groups, and some singly flit through 197 d
all the others. Let us, he says, in defiance of eristic critics 196 d a.
shamelessly define knowledge while still seeking for false opinion
in the endeavor to define it. We have, in fact, been compelled to
use the words “know” and “not-know” as if we understood
them throughout. Instead of saying that to know is to have 197 b
knowledge, let us say it is to possess it. If the mind is a sort of 197 c
aviary, empty at birth and gradually filled, we have all the birds
in the aviary but/>0JJW only the bird in the hand. In one sense
(i.e., potentially or unconsciously) we have all the birds in the
aviary, in another (actually or consciously) we have only the
bird that we “apprehend” at the moment (the bird at the focus
of consciousness). This does away with the difficulties or falla- 198 cd

a8a

WHAT PLATO SAID

199 c

Euthyd. 276 D ff.

199 AB

Aelian Epist. rust.

19

199 C 10

On 189 C
On Hipp. Maj.
294 E

199 E

200 A 12
On Hipp. Maj.

286 E

200 BC
On Lysis 219 C

195 E

cies that turn on the knowing and not-knowing of the same
thing. Those who please may play with the quibble. We say
that error and the mistaking of one thing for another take place
when we catch a dove instead of a pigeon in our aviary. And
yet — and yet if we know both, how can false opinion arise from
the mistaking of one knowledge for another knowledge? The-
aetetus, entering into the game, ingeniously suggests that some
of the birds are ignorances. But that, Socrates, or the eristic
whom he imagines, points out, only brings us around once more
to the puzzle with which we began. If we know knowledges and
ignorances, how can we mistake one for the other? Shall we
again distinguish and subdivide different species of knowledges
and ignorances and invent aviaries within the aviary, an in¬
finite series? This discussion and the images that illustrate it
bring out incidentally many principles of psychology that may
be considered elsewhere. Their bearing on the main argument
is simple. The fact of error is certain. What is the explanation?
Plato uses the wax tablet to illustrate one type of error — the
erroneous judgment of a new incoming perception, saying,
“That man is Socrates” when he is Theaetetus. The image of
the aviary is introduced to illustrate errors within the mind and
the distinction between actual and potential, conscious and un¬
conscious knowledge. The example, five and seven are eleven,
has no profound significance and no special reference to mathe¬
matics. It is taken as the most obvious and indisputable case
of a common experience. Any other mistaken judgment or ut¬
terance that did not involve immediate reference to a new per¬
ception would serve as well.

Kant’s evasion, that we can start with seven and adding five
units one by one verify in imaginative perception the truth that
five and seven are twelve, is irrelevant to Plato’s point. Nor¬
mally the mind functions correctly and reproduces the right
association: five, seven, twelve. Why does it sometimes go as¬
tray so that we say five, seven, thirteen? A materialistic expla¬
nation in terms of misplaced switches or wrongly inserted tele¬
phone-board plugs in the nervous system, if offered as a real ex¬
planation and not a mere illustration, commits its proponent to
materialism and nominalism as a whole. The question then
arises, Does he recognize and admit this commitment or not?

THEAETETUS

283

If he does, the entire issue of materialism and all its metaphysi¬
cal implications is raised. If he does not, Plato’s problem recurs.
Why do the judgments, the associations of our mind, sometimes
go astray? That this is not merely the primitive puzzle of Plato’s
naive thought appears from the desperate attempts of Royce
in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy to solve the problem.
Royce was acquainted with Kant’s answer, if Plato was not.
But it did not satisfy him. He had studied the Theaetetus and
perhaps perceived that the breakdown of the attempt to explain
mental error by the physical imagery of the wax tablets and the
aviary symbolizes the failure of all future hypotheses of this
kind from Malebranche to present-day materialists and behav-
iorists. This was probably Plato’s intention, though I hope I
shall not be accused of saying that he foresaw Malebranche and
the behaviorists. This significance of the Theaetetus is generally
overlooked, and it would be dogmatically denied by uncom¬
promising modern physiological psychologists. What misleads
the modern critic is the assumption that with our scientific
anatomy and neurology we are on a wholly different track from
Plato, and that his arguments have only a historical interest.
But the fact is that for the final philosophic explanation it
makes no difference whether with Plato you talk of wax tablets
and aviaries, or with Malebranche of animal spirits running in
the arteries, or with Professor James of the brain cells and
processes and afferent and efferent nerves. One proof that the
progress of science has nothing to do with the question is that so
far from needing more neurology, Professor James and his suc¬
cessors are not able to use what they have. They illustrate men¬
tal processes not by a true representation of the nervous system
so far as now known to science, but by a purely conventional
and diagrammatic scheme which leaves the real psychological
problem precisely where it is left by Plato’s wax tablets and
aviaries, or by Malebranche’s animal spirits. Back of all the
streaming in and out along the nerves and the storing up asso¬
ciations and complication of sensation in “nerve cells,” there is
implied a unifying apprehension or indivisible focalization which
no system of cross-switches or central telephone board of nerves
makes any more thinkable than Plato’s wax tablet and aviaries.
Philologists and psychologists may argue at cross-purposes

284

WHAT PLATO SAID

about the Tlieaetetus till doomsday. But no one who does not
grasp this idea can understand it at all.

The apparently sophistical dilemma “know or not-know”
seems to be got rid of by the material mechanism that enables
us to divide up the absolute “know” into a graduated series of
processes of cognition — shock, sensation, perception, memory
images, discussion, thought, etc., and we fancy that we have ex¬
plained error as a maladjustment in these processes — a mis¬
placed switch — a crossed telephone wire. But on closer scrutiny
we find that the working of the whole system depends on the
switchman or the president of the road, or the operator at the
centre — and they are not wires or switches. Or, to drop the
metaphor, each of the subdivided processes or elements of
knowledge is only a channel of connection with a central con¬
sciousness that passes judgment on every cognition and either
knows or does not know it. The fallacious antithesis, know or
not-know, is, in the final psychological analysis, justified, i.e.,
real, as against all attempts to divide up the central conscious¬
ness and distribute it to its instruments in space and time. The
only possible answer to this argument is that a “central con¬
sciousness” is something to which we can attach no clear idea.
It is a mystery — we cannot explain it. That is perfectly true.
But then, genuine Platonists do not attempt to explain it. They
begin by saying that it cannot be explained. It is the physio¬
logical psychologists who claim either that they have explained
it already or that they will explain it, when they have learned a
little more about the nature of the wax or the structure of the
aviary. And the wonder of the Theaetetus is that twenty-three
hundred years ago it dissipated the illusion forever in the minds
of all who really understand it. Readers who feel that this is
reading too much into Plato may return to the analysis of the

200 cd Theaetetus with Socrates' remark that they cannot be expected

to explain error when they do not yet know what knowledge is.
He then abruptly disposes of the second definition by the argu¬
ment that right opinion is often found where knowledge is obvi-
on Euthyph. 9b ously absent, as, for example, when rhetoricians in the brief time

201 ab allotted by the clepsydra persuade a jury of things that could be

known only by seeing them.

2oi cd Theaetetus recalls a third definition, that knowledge is right

THEAETETUS

285

opinion coupled with logos. This is for practical purposes sub¬
stantially Plato’s own view. Transcendentally, knowledge is the
apprehension of the idea. In human life it is the dialectician’s
reasoned mastery of his opinions implying stability, consistency,
and the power to render exact account of beliefs. Plato reserves
the terms “knowledge,” “intelligence,” “pure reason,” for the
man who co-ordinates his opinions, unifies them by systematic
reference to higher principles, ideals, and “ideas,” and who can
defend them in fair argument against all comers. This is not a
definition, but it is quite as good a description as the most mod¬
ern of his critics can produce. This view is set forth in the Re- Rep. S34BC
■public in the context necessary to make it intelligible. It would
not have suited Plato’s design to repeat or anticipate that de¬
scription in the Theaetetus , which is cast in the form of a dia¬
logue of search. Moreover, it is one thing to give a general
definition of knowledge and another thing to describe the state
of mind to which the term “science” or “knowledge” par ex¬
cellence is applicable. Sensible perception is not a synonym or
definition of knowledge, or, according to Plato, knowledge in the
highest sense. But it is the most certain and the only knowledge
we possess of some kinds of objects. And the recognition of this
fact in various passages of the Theaetetus would in itself make a
satisfactory all-inclusive definition of knowledge impossible. Ac¬
cordingly, Plato brings the dialogue to a plausible conclusion by
discussing (and rejecting) various possible meanings of logos ,
none of which yields a good definition.

If logos means “rational explanation,” the ingenious theory
continues, it follows that elements (letters) are not “cognizable” 20I de
(for so the author of the theory phrased it). They can only be 202 bi
named. But syllables (compounds) are both knowable and ex- 202 b 7
pressible since resolution into their elements is knowing them. 202 d
Socrates’ conclusion, at first strenuously opposed by Theaete- 20s c
tus, but confirmed by experience as well as by argument, that 206 a-d
the syllable (compound) is not the composition of its elements
but a new emergent idea, is a symbolic anticipation of the per¬
petually rediscovered truth that the whole is not always the
sum of its parts, and its qualities cannot be deduced from them.

There are many references to this Platonic principle in Aris-

a86

WHAT PLATO SAID

206 c a.

208 C 5
207

208 C ff.

206 D

On Charm. 159 A

207 A

Works and Days
456

20S A

208 D

209 A

209 D

210 B
Cf. 149-50

totle, and modern writers frequently enunciate it as a new and
striking thought.

To save the theory three possible meanings of logos are pro¬
posed: (1) the mirroring of thought in speech, (2) the enumera¬
tion of the elements or parts of a thing, (3) the definition. None
of these will define knowledge. Everyone not deaf and dumb
can express his thought, and logos in this sense cannot dis¬
tinguish knowledge from opinion. The second meaning of logos
would require us to know Hesiod’s hundred parts of a wagon in
order to know the wagon. Furthermore, to recur to our illustra¬
tion of letters (elements), one who spells Theaetetus correctly,
enumerates the “elements” of Theaetetus by right opinion and
not by knowledge if he spells Theodorus with a t and not a th.
Lastly, if we take logos to mean “definition,” it might at first
seem that a thing was defined if distinguished from everything
else; as, for example, when we say that the sun is the brightest
of the heavenly bodies that circle the earth. But on closer ex¬
amination difficulties arise. If we define Theaetetus by mouth,
nose, eyes, etc., we have not distinguished him from other men.
If we add the difference snub-nosedness, we have still not dis¬
tinguished him from Socrates. The peculiar difference of his
snub-nosedness must be stamped as a memory image on the
mind if we are to recognize him by right opinion tomorrow. But
when we thus already possess right opinion of the difference,
how can the tautologous addition of right opinion of difference
convert our opinion into knowledge? Thus none of the three
meanings of logos yields a definition that will endure scrutiny.

Theaetetus is no longer pregnant. He has brought forth more
than was in him with Socrates’ aid, and all his deliverances have
proved to be wind eggs.

The dialogue closes, like the minor dialogues, with a failure to
find the definition sought. In the minor dialogues it did not suit
Plato’s dramatic purposes to anticipate the definitive expression
of the ideas of the Republic or to produce his working and prac¬
tically sufficient definitions of ethical terms. Here I think he is
aware that no definition of knowledge that goes beyond a tauto¬
logical formula can be given apart from a complete and defini¬
tive psychology. Those who challenge this statement should
produce their definition and their definitive psychology.

PARMENIDES

The structure of the Parmenides is the abrupt juxtaposition
of a dramatic introduction in which there appears no loss of
Plato’s earlier cunning in this kind, and some forty pages of arid
dialectic that anticipates and beats Hegel at his own game. The
only qualities of literary art displayed in this monotonous con¬
catenation of abstractions are the swiftness, the precision, and
the exhaustive symmetry with which all types and examples of
the equivocations and fallacies of all possible future systems of
verbal metaphysics are classified, distributed, and marshaled to¬
ward the foregone conclusion, formulated by Damascius in an¬
tiquity and Herbert Spencer in modern times, that our appre¬
hensions of ultimate things are inextricably involved in contra¬
diction, and reality is unknowable and inexpressible: “If the
one is and if it is not, it and other things both are and are not,
appear to be and appear not to be all things in all ways, both in
themselves and in relation to one another.” 166C

The dialogue is recited (an impossible tour de force of memory)
by Plato’s half-brother Antiphon, who in turn heard it from one
Pythodorus, who was actually present at the remote date of a
conversation between the then youthful Socrates and Parmeni- 126 c
des of Elea, then aged sixty-five, and his disciple Zeno, aged 127 ab
forty.

Cephalus of Clazomenae narrates that, meeting Plato’s broth- 126 a
ers Adeimantus and Glaucon, he told them that he and his com¬
panions have heard that Plato’s half-brother knows by heart a
conversation which he learned from Pythodorus. At Adeiman- 126 b
! tus’ suggestion they proceed to the house of Antiphon, whom 127 a
they find giving out a bridle for repair. His interest in philoso- ReP.498A
phy is a thing of the past. But he still remembers what he com- Gorg. 484 c
mitted to memory as a youth, and, after some demur, recites the Tim. 26 b
conversation as Pythodorus told it to him. When Pythodorus, 127 cd
Parmenides, and Aristoteles, afterward one of the “Thirty,”
joined the company Zeno had nearly finished reading a lecture
in which he defended Parmenides’ thesis of the unity of exist-

287

a88

WHAT PLATO SAID

128 BD

128 A
129 A ff.

129 BC
Phileb. 14 E 1
Soph. 251 AB

129 CDE

130 B

130 CD

130 E

131 AB

132 A

On Lysis 219 C

132 BC

132 D

ence by the argument that the assumption of a pluralized world
involves as many contradictions as does the hypothesis of unity.
Socrates, with some perfunctory compliments to Zeno’s ingenu¬
ity, and his “friendship” for Parmenides, points out that Zeno
has developed the antithesis of the one and the many in concrete
things only. An individual man is one in a sense and yet is
many parts and admits of many predicates. That is all very
well, but somewhat obvious and not at all surprising. Socrates
would admire much more the philosopher who could exhibit
similar contradictions in the realm of pure ideas or abstractions
— who could show, for example, that the idea itself is both one
and many.

Parmenides asks Socrates if he himself draws the distinction
of which he speaks between abstract ideas and the things that
partake of them. And when Socrates replies that he does, Par¬
menides questions him further as to the precise extent and
meaning of the doctrine. Are there ideas of all things? Not only
of mathematical and ethical conceptions and of natural and
manufactured objects, but of even the most trivial and un¬
worthy things? Socrates shrinks from this last conclusion, but
Parmenides, expressing a thought that recurs in Plato, admon¬
ishes him that philosophic truth is not concerned with the great¬
er or less dignity of the object. Parmenides goes on to criticize
the theory. By what metaphors can things be said to participate
in the idea, and how can the idea be imparted to a multiplicity
of things without losing its apartness and its unity? Will it be
apart from itself?

Again, if it is necessary to assume an idea in order to account
for the resemblance of different objects of the same class, why
not assume another idea to explain the likeness between the
idea itself and the objects, and so on in infinite series? They are
unable to solve these and other objections to the theory. Soc¬
rates’ suggestion that the idea may be only a concept of or in
the mind, and Parmenides’ objection that the concept must be
a concept of something, which something will virtually be an
idea, raise metaphysical problems which may be considered else¬
where. The metaphorical evasion that the ideas are patterns in
nature which the things named after them copy is found equally
unsatisfactory. And there is the further culminating difficulty

PARMENIDES

289

that if the world of ideas and the world of things are separate
and distinct, God cannot know particulars and the ideas will be
forever unknowable to man.

Nevertheless Parmenides himself admits that without the as¬
sumption of fixed ideas thought and dialectics become impossi¬
ble. What shall we do? Parmenides, who apparently here is the
mouthpiece of Plato himself, admonishes Socrates that he is too
young and insufficiently prepared to answer these ultimate ques¬
tions and to define, as is his constant endeavor, such large ideas
as the good, the just, and the beautiful. He must first train his
mind in a kind of logical exercise that the multitude will deem
foolishness. The method of such mental gymnastics is to select
a hypothesis and work out all the consequences of both its affir¬
mation and its negation. As an illustration they select the hy¬
pothesis that the one is or is not, that the many are or are not.
Thereupon follow the forty pages of Hegelian dialectic already
characterized, distributed under nine subordinate hypotheses.

The Neoplatonists interpreted this dialectical exercitation as
a theological treatise on the unknown and unknowable One.

The prevailing view today is that the first part of the dialogue
marks a crisis in Plato’s thought, when he himself became aware
of the insuperable objections to his theory of ideas and of the
necessity of a reconstruction of his entire philosophy, to be car¬
ried out in later dialogues — a reconstruction for which, as a
matter of fact, there is not the slightest evidence. My reasons
for rejecting these and all other overingenious interpretations
of the dialogue are indicated in the notes and have been and will
be more critically explained elsewhere. All such theories ignore
the obvious fact that every philosophy that admits any meta¬
physic or religion is exposed to objections essentially identical
with those here brought against the theory of transcendental
ideas. Any philosopher who cannot or will not accept the alter¬
native of pure positivism or thoroughgoing materialism must
disregard or evade these difficulties as Plato did.

Briefly then, I believe that the second part of the Parmenides
is a conscious exercise in logic, a systematic exhibition of the
fallacies that arise from the confusion of is, the copula, with is
referring to real existence, as well as incidentally of other meta¬
physical fallacies explained in the Sophist and to some extent in

133-34

135 B

Soph. 250 C 9
130 E 1
135 c

On Phaedo 70 C
135 C 8

Theaet. 169 C 1
On Phaedo 101 D
135-36

Phileb. 15 B ff.,
16 Off.

29° WHAT PLATO SAID

the Philebus and Theaetctus , and parodied in the Euthydemus.
I hold that the illustration of these fallacies is too symmetrical
and exhaustive to be unconscious, and that the points of agree¬
ment with the Sophist are too numerous and precise to be acci¬
dental coincidences. Plato knew what he was doing. He was
putting the principles of all future systems of bad metaphysics
out of his way in cold storage instead of messing them up as
is de Aristotle did in his Metaphysics . The introduction to the Phile-
16 a bus is proof enough that he was not in the least agitated by the
obvious objections to his theory of ideas. He had always known
them and disregarded them. The theory, he felt, was an indis¬
pensable working hypothesis of logic as well as the expression of
476 a an ultimate idealistic faith. It was, as the Republic implies, hard
532 d to accept and hard to reject. But here as everywhere Plato
draws a sharp and easily recognizable line between the problems
of ultimate metaphysics and the practical postulates of common
sense.

A great deal of ink has been spilled over this dialogue, and the
profoundest mystical meanings have been discovered in its sym¬
metrical antinomies. To rational criticism nothing can be more
certain than that they are, as already said, in the main a logical
exercitation more nearly akin to the Euthydemus and the Soph¬
ist than to the Timaeus , and that they are not meant to be taken
seriously except in so far as they teach by indirection precisely
the logic of common sense expounded in the Sophist. Indeed,
245 e the dialogue could be aptly characterized by this sentence of the
Sophist: “One thing is linked to another in a concatenation that
brings ever increasing bewilderment about what has been said
before. ” In style, however, the Parmenides presents few, if any,
traces of the elaborate “late” manner of the Sophist , and this
fact makes the identity of doctrine the more significant. The
method of argumentation employed is characterized in the
Phaedrus as a kind of rhetoric, and in the Sophist as mere eristic.

It is equally foolish to deny or to take seriously the antinomies
(evavTLoxreoLv) that arise from the communion of ideas and the
relativity of “being,” “not-being,” and “other.” Such contra¬
dictions are nothing difficult when one knows the trick.

Many passages of the Parmenides closely resemble arguments
and expressions which are ridiculed in the Theaetetus and Soph-

PARMENIDES

291

ist, and which are presumably little more serious here than the
reasoning of Agathon's speech in the Symposium 196 C. In the
Theaetetus 180 D, the words, “in order that even the cobblers
may apprehend their wisdom and may no longer foolishly sup¬
pose that some things are at rest and some in motion," show
Plato's real opinion of these absolute antinomies. In general the
Parmenides exemplifies what the Sophist (245 E) ironically
terms “those who try to speak precisely of being and not-being.”
The dialogue itself abounds in hints that it is not seriously
meant. It is recited by one whose light has gone out more com¬
pletely than that of Heraclitus' sun, and who now is devoted
to horsemanship. Parmenides himself characterizes it as a kind
of intellectual gymnastics which it would be unseemly to prac¬
tice in the presence of the uninitiated, and explicitly terms it a
laborious game. He chooses as his respondent the youngest in¬
terlocutor, on the ground that he will be least likely to play the
busybody — that is, to interrupt the flow of plausible ratiocina¬
tion by distinctions like those with which Socrates checked the
stream of fallacy in the Euthydemus.

This prevailing tone of the second part of the Parmenides is
not incompatible with the presence there of some serious
thoughts. The second and longest hypothesis, though full of
quibbles and fallacies, expounds the essential teaching of the
Sophist with regard to the relative being and not-being of hu¬
man logic. And indeed, the entire argument, as we have said,
teaches by indirection the logic of the Sophist. The groups of
contradictory conclusions deduced from the hypothesis that the
One is and that the One is not derive almost wholly from the
equivocal meaning of “is" — from taking “is" or “is not" to sig¬
nify now the absolute uncommunicating being or not-being
which the Sophist dismisses as impracticable, and now the rela¬
tive being and not-being, or otherness, which the Sophist estab¬
lishes as the only tenable use of the terms in human logic. And
near the beginning of each hypothesis we are distinctly warned
of the sense in which “is" and “is not" must be taken.

This is perhaps sufficient; but another way of putting it will
bring out the parallelism with the Sophist still more clearly. The
eristic combated in the Sophist may be resumed in two chief
fallacies: (1) The noumenal unity of the idea is incompatible

Rep. 498 AB
126 C

137 B 2

137 B 7

293 C
296 A-C

142 B-155 E
Soph. 259 AB

Soph. 258 E
Soph. 257 ff*

2C)2

WHAT PLATO SAID

Soph. 238 C-241
A, etc.

Soph. 256 AB
259 E, etc.
Soph. 250 DE
258 E
Soph. 257 ff.

On Euthyd. 284 A

137 C-142 A
Tim. 52 B

141 E

142 A
Soph. 248 C ff.

142 C 4 ff.
Soph. 244 D ff.

144 B

144 E 5-6

160 C
160 E 8
158 A
Soph. 256-57
258 B 10
162 A

with any suggestion of change, relation, or multiplicity. The
ideas will not communicate or mix. Predication is impossible.
You cannot say “Man is good,” but only “Man is man” and
“Good is good.” (2) The negative, “is not,” denotes absolute
nonexistence, which is unutterable and unthinkable. Plato an¬
swers in substance: (1) We must admit the mixture of ideas, the
seeming multiplication of one idea by communion with others,
as a condition of intelligible speech. Without it we cannot even
predicate existence, identity, and diversity. (2) Absolute not-
being is no more nor less a problem than absolute being. The
only not-being that finds a place in intelligible speech is other¬
ness — that which is not this, but is some other thing. Now in
the eight or nine hypotheses of the Parmenides these two princi¬
ples are alternately and systematically violated and recognized
— the consequences in each case being drawn out in close paral¬
lelism to those indicated in the Sophist . In the absolute positive
theses the ideas are taken in self-identity, in isolation,

The one has no parts, and the exclusion of parts is found to shut
out all predicates that imply multiplicity, space, time, or num¬
ber. And since these are the forms in which being appears, we
cannot even say that it is. There is neither knowledge nor
speech of it. In the absolute negative theses, not-being, /n)
is taken to exclude every sense of elvat, with a similar result. In
the hypotheses concerned with relative being and not-being the
reasoning is reversed. If we speak at all of unu?n and alia we
imply existence in some sense. The existent one is two (unity and
existence), has parts, and so by necessary implications is clothed
in all the predicates of space, time, and relation. Instead of abid¬
ing in isolation, the one everywhere united with essence, ov aia,
is divided up among the indefinite multiplicity of “things,”
ovra. And it is explicitly affirmed that this is true of the most
abstract and ideal unity that we can conceive.

Similarly, starting from the assumption that pd] ov (or prj ev)
means something, and something different, we deduce first “par¬
ticipation” in various predicates, and finally the defiant paradox
of the Sophist that prj ov c-ort. The doctrine of these relative hy¬
potheses is that of the Sophist. The reasoning of the absolute
hypotheses is that of the preliminary cnropiai in Sophist 237-46,
and it is, as we have said, well described in Theaetetus’ language

PARMENIDES

293

there (245 E). In view of these facts, it is idle to attempt to date
the Parmenides and the Sophist by their philosophical content,
though we may acquiesce in the opinion of the style statisticians
that the Parmenides is earlier. The substantial identity of doc¬
trine does not, of course, exclude many minor differences in the
literary form and the secondary purposes of the two dialogues.
One object of the Parmenides , for example, is to illustrate ex¬
haustively the “both and neither” of the eristic caricatured in
the Euthydemus. The absolute hypotheses issue in blank nega¬
tion. In order to make the “both and neither” plausible, some
reasoning from the absolute point of view is introduced into the
relative hypotheses.

Again, it is not easy to say how much importance Plato at¬
tached to the third division of the argument in which the con¬
tradictions of the first two hypotheses, and, by implication, of
all the others, are resolved. Contradictory predicates (the
“both”) cannot be true simultaneously — they belong to differ¬
ent times. The “neither” belongs to the instantaneous moment
of transition, the “sudden” which is outside of time altogether.
It would be possible to read a plausible psychological meaning
into this ingenious solution of the Zenonian problem of change.
But it cannot easily be translated into the terminology of the
theory of ideas. Pure being admits of neither of the contradic¬
tory predicates, and the ideas as noumena are outside of space
and time. But the “one” which is here spoken of as out of time,
and without predicates at the moment of transition, is apparent¬
ly not the idea, but any one thing which may participate in the
ideas. This consideration, and the fact that the ^ai^vrjs is never
mentioned again, seem to indicate that it was only a passing
fancy. It nevertheless suggests answers to the problem of
change which are still debated by the subtlest of modern physi¬
cists and philosophers.

Supra, pp. 59, 66

Euthyd. 300 D i
Cratyl. 386 D

156 D s-E 1

SOPHIST

216 A

217 D

217 A

Supra, p. 71

Supra, p. 30
Epicrates fr. n,
Kock II 287

219 A

218 D ff.

The wealth of thought of the “dialectical” dialogues makes
them quite as interesting in their different way to the student of
the history of ideas as the earlier masterpieces of satire, moral
eloquence, and dramatic portraiture are to the generality of
readers. They have little of the grace and charm of the earlier
dramatic pictures of Athenian life and conversation.

In the Sophist , after a brief Introduction which represents the
dialogue as a continuation by appointment of the Theaetetus ,
Socrates appears only as an interested listener to the dialectic
of an Eleatic guest who conducts the argument, with Theaetetus
as assenting respondent. The few jests are ponderous and the
satire is richer in thought than in wit. The question which Soc¬
rates abruptly proposes for discussion by the Eleatic is the
meaning of the words “sophist,” “statesman,” “philosopher.”
Are they synonyms? And, if not, what is the definition of each?
We have now only the name in common. What is the meaning
and what is the thing?

The Sophist and Politicus , then (the Philosopher was never
written), are ostensibly quests for the definition of those terms.
The minor dialogues often seek definitions, but always unsuc¬
cessfully. Here the definition is reached by a half-serious elabo¬
ration of the method of division, which contemporary comedy
parodies as characteristic of the Platonic Academy, and modern
conjecture fancies is significant of the increasing interest of
Plato’s later years in science and in biological classification.
The method, as exemplified in the Sophist , is this: The term to
be defined is subsumed under some very large inclusive group,
as, for example, the concept art or science, and this group or
class is successively subdivided by dichotomy, as in Porphyry’s
logical tree or the game “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral,” until
the original term is definitely “located” in the last division.

To take the trifling example used by Plato as an explanatory
illustration: Fishing is an art, not of production but of acquisi¬
tion, of acquisition not by consent but by capture; not of open

294

SOPHIST

295

but of furtive capture; capture not of inanimate but of living
things; not of things that live on land but of things that live in
liquid; not of creatures that live in air but in water; not by nets
but by strokes; not by night but by daylight; not by strokes
from below, but by a hook suspended from above. The final 221 b
definition is a summation of all the right-hand distinctive or
differentiating qualifications.

This seems as simple as the “safe” method of cause in the
Phaedo , and in both cases Plato is plainly smiling at his own 100 d
terminology. The humor is not so broad, but it is as unmistak- On Cratyl. 425 D
able as that of the Cratylus. Distinction, division, and classifica- Infra, p. 308
tion are fundamental methods that pervade all Plato's thought.

Plato may have been interested in seeing how far the method
could be carried, and he may have regarded it as a useful, logical
exercise for students. But in the Sophist and Politicus he is ob¬
viously playing with it. He clearly recognizes that formally cor¬
rect dichotomy may lead to half-a-dozen definitions of the
“sophist,” and in the Politicus he supplements it by other meth¬
ods for distinguishing the statesman from those with whom he
is often confused. No mechanical procedure will infallibly yield
a true definition of the essence. All depends upon the tact with
which the original one, the concept to be divided, is chosen and
the insight that selects at each turn the most significant princi¬
ple of subdivision. The process of dichotomy is only a mechani¬
cal aid to exhaustive search and the discovery of all relevant
distinctions. The elaboration of it as a method of definition in
the Sophist and Politicus is a mere episode. It is not thus ex¬
aggerated in the Philebus , Timaeus , or Laws. And this exag¬
geration — caricature, we may almost say — is therefore of little
importance for Plato's “later thought.”

Against this interpretation the testimony of Aristotle and
other more or less plausible considerations are sometimes urged.

Aristotle argues that the method of division cannot prove but
only assumes the definition, and he is at considerable pains to
show that it does not anticipate his discovery of the syllogism.

His view of the matter is sufficiently accounted for by the proba¬
ble preoccupation of the school with these exercises about the
time that he came to Athens, and by his jealousy for his own
originality. The technical detail of this complicated question

WHAT PLATO SAID

296

may be found in my paper on ‘The Origin of the Syllogism/’
and will be more fully considered elsewhere, together with the
ingenious and, as I believe, mistaken attempt to distinguish
philosophically and metaphysically the divisions of the Sophist
and Politicus from the divisions mentioned in the earlier dia¬
logues. It is enough here to repeat that Plato does not really
claim that the method, mechanically employed, proves any¬
thing. The further hypothesis that the method is a product of
the concrete scientific studies which engaged the attention of
Plato’s later years belongs to a critical study of Plato’s relation
to science. Meanwhile we may observe that the Laws , the work
which must have occupied most of Plato’s time during these
years, is concerned not with science or logical method, but with
social reform.

The random application of the method of dichotomy yields
231 d six definitions of the “sophist” which the Eleat enumerates. He
is (1) a hireling huntsman of rich young men, (2) an importer of
spiritual wares, (3) a retail dealer in the same, (4) a peddler of
his own productions in this kind, (5) an athlete of eristic debate,
231 e (6) somewhat ambiguously, for it seems to confound him with
23? a 6 the philosopher, a purifier of the soul from opinions that are ob-
23o7d 2 stacles to instruction. Purification is a subdivision of discrimi¬
nation or separation. Our dialectical classification is not con-
On Parmen. 130 cerned with higher and lower but only with relevant distinc-
E tions, as, e.g., the distinction between purification of the body
226 d 6 and of the soul. Purification or purging removes the evil and
Rep. 567 c 4 leaves the good. The evil of the soul, like that of the body, has
Tim.286B two forms, disease and ugliness. Disease or faction in the soul
Rep‘t4oE^ is the conflict of reason and opinion with desire, appetite, and
on Phaedr.2237- pleasure. Ugliness is disproportion, which in things that move
38 causes them to miss the mark. This aberration of the soul from
22s d the mark of truth is ignorance, and every soul is ignorant against
Hi a its will. In the body the remedy for disease is medicine, and for
Gorg. 505 c ugliness gymnastics. In the soul the cure of disease is chastise-
Erastae 137 c ff. ment and the cure of ignorance is instruction. But there are
two forms of ignorance, and therefore two kinds of instruction.
229 c The grosser form of ignorance is the double ignorance that mis-
On Lysis 218 AB takes itself for knowledge. The old-fashioned remedy for this is
admonition. But some, observing that admonition, merepre-

SOPHIST

297

cept and preaching, accomplishes little with much toil, have 230 ab
found a better way. By skilful questioning they bring out the
“wanderings” and self-contradictions of the ignorant man who onphaedo79C
thinks he knows and convict him of ignorance to the entertain- aPoi. 23 c ff.
ment of the bystanders and his own betterment. He is freed Rep. 539 b
from his stiff and stubborn opinions and blames himself only. 230 d
Until thus purged he can receive no nourishment from instruc- onPhaedogoD
tion. We may hesitate to call the practitioners of this method
“sophists” lest we identify them with the philosopher whom
they resemble as the wolf resembles the dog. Resemblances are 23i a 6
slippery things to be handled with much caution. However, if 23iab
for the present purpose we let that pass, then the confutation by
questions of the vain conceit of knowledge which is a part of the
educative division of the instructive division of the psychic half
of the purgative half of the discriminative art will be the noble 231 b 7
and nobly born art of sophistry.

These tentatives bring out various aspects of the sophist
which have been touched upon in earlier dialogues. But six def¬
initions are no definition. They obviously have not grasped his 232 a
essence, the one unifying principle in his different aspects. This
the Eleat arbitrarily, or by intuition and observation, decides to 232 b
be his habit of contentious contradiction. He is prepared to dis- 233 b
pute anything and therefore seems to his admiring pupils to f3u3thJd* 272 AB
know everything. But universal knowledge is an impossibility. ^3e3pA5p8C_E
It is not knowledge but opinion. The sophist is found to be a pro- (Loeb)
ducer of illusion or false opinion by words, as the painter is by 234 cd
colors.

This raises the old puzzle, How is illusion, error, false opinion,
possible? To say the thing that is not is to say nothing. That On Theaet. 167 A
seems to us a foolish quibble. But underlying it is the problem
of the full psychological explanation of error which baffles in- cf. infra, p. 581
quiry in the Theaetetus as it does today, because its solution supra, p.282
would require a definitive epistemology and a complete explana¬
tion of the interdependence of mind and body. The mainly psy- infra, P. 572
chological discussion of the problem in the Theaetetus is a still
valid demonstration of this truth. No spatial image, whether
invented or supposedly taken from the anatomy of the nervous
system, can represent the synthetic unity of consciousness and
memory. None can explain the comparison of past and pres-

WHAT PLATO SAID

Infra, p. 581
236 E
238 D

251 AB
254 c

237 A ff.

239-40

Supra, p. 289

298

ent impressions in an unextended focal point of consciousness.
None can represent, except in the vaguest poetical figure, a
psychical mechanism that now operates correctly, yielding right
opinion, and now incorrectly, resulting in error. The Sophist
therefore renounces the attempt at a psychological, epistemolog¬
ical, or metaphysical solution of the question and aims only at
avoiding self-contradiction. But its dialectic provides a practi¬
cal working formula against the logical fallacy, and lays the
foundation of logic by distinguishing the is of existence from the
copula.

That is the purport of the long digression on the meaning of
not-being, which is perhaps the main theme of the dialogue. Its
place in the architecture of the dialogue is obvious enough. By
Greek idiom, falsehood or error is saying or thinking the thing
that is not. When the Sophists were accused of promulgating
false opinion, some of them more or less seriously argued that to
opine what is false is to opine what is not, and what is not is
nothing. I have repeatedly maintained that Plato never took
this quibble seriously, but that, his patience being exhausted, he
finally in the Sophist clarified the confusion of thought that it
involved and laid the foundations of logic by explicitly dis¬
tinguishing the copula from the substantive is, and explaining
as clearly as was feasible in the Greek idiom of his day the na¬
ture of negative and affirmative predication and the structure
of the simple sentence. I hold that while it is always difficult to
draw the precise line between logic and metaphysics, Plato does
draw it as consciously and as distinctly in the Sophist as the
greatest modern logicians, not excepting John Stuart Mill, have
done. And when either before or after the Sophist, Plato, speak¬
ing as a metaphysician, seems to contradict some of the purely
logical expressions of the Sophist, I think that it is uncritical to
press such contradictions and enlist them in the support of any
theory of the development and changes in Plato’s philosophy.
They are inherent in the subject, and no philosopher who ad¬
mits any ontology or religion in opposition to thoroughgoing
materialism can escape them.

Absolute being, Plato admits in the Sophist, and illustrates at
length in the Parmenides, involves as many self-contradictions
and antinomies of thought as absolute not-being. But the falla-

SOPHIST

299

cies of absolute being trouble only metaphysicians, while the fal¬
lacy of absolute not-being, the w 6p fallacy, was a real nuisance
in contemporary Greek discussion. Furthermore, absolute be¬
ing was needed as a symbol of the Ding an sich> the something
more than the shadows of the cave that all religions and philoso¬
phies, all thinkers except dogmatic positivists and material¬
ists, divine behind the veil. Absolute not-being had no such
transcendental associations for Plato's mind, and, except for a
few muddled mystics who belong to the history of Platonism
and not to the interpretation of Plato, has never been an edify¬
ing symbol of anything. Only very matter-of-fact logicians will
refuse to see in these considerations an explanation, perhaps a
justification, of Plato’s different treatment elsewhere of the two
conceptions which a sentence of the Sophist admits to be equally 250 e 6
baffling. In the Republic , for example, Plato varies his termi- 47f7f!5.4(Lolb)
nology to suit his theme. He needs the transcendental absolute
Being for the world of ideas as opposed to the world of sense, for
the symbolism of the Idea of Good, the image of the sun, the
cave, and the conversion from the shadows to the realities. It
would have been singularly tactless to preface these passages
with an explanation that op like w op is a relative term, and that
all 6ptcl with which human logic can deal are likewise opto..

There is no occasion for the opto, and w optcl of practical logic
here. Absolute not-being is consigned to total ignorance as it is
in the Sophist . Pure being is reserved for the ideas, as it is in the cf. infra, P. 300
Timaeus , which was written at a time when the results of the 37E7ff.
Sophist were certainly familiar to Plato. Its antithesis, the
world of phenomena, is described as tumbling about between Rep. 479 d
being and not-being — as a mixture of the two; the things of
sense are always changing — they are and are not. It was not
necessary to dash the spirit of mystic contemplation and enthu¬
siasm by the reminder that the ideas themselves, when drawn
down into the process of human thought, move to and fro and
partake of both being and not-being, though he does practically
say it in Republic 476. We are concerned in the Republic only
with the broad contrast between the two worlds. To say that
the objects of sense and the notions of the vulgar tumble about
between being and not-being is merely another way of saying
that they belong to the domain of the mixed or relative being

3°°

WHAT PLATO SAID

and not-being described in the Sophist. Only a deplorably mat¬
ter-of-fact criticism can find in this adaptation of the terminolo¬
gy to the immediate literary purpose a concession to a fallacy
ridiculed throughout the dialogues. And the arguments that
would prove the results of the Sophist unknown to the author
of the Republic would apply almost equally to the Timaeus; for
there, too, Plato calmly reinstates the absolute ov which the
Sophist banishes from human speech as no less contradictory
than the absolute w ov, and treats as an inaccuracy the expres¬
sion rd nrj ov [xyj ov elvoiL, the practical necessity of which the
Parmonf 'i 62 ab Sophist proves and the Parmenides illustrates. Yet the treat¬
ment of the “same” and the “other” in the psychogonia proves
that the analysis of the Sophist was familiar to the author of the
Timaeus.

The detail of this part of the Sophist involves questions of the
text and of Plato’s relations to the pre-Socratics that need not
237 a be considered here. But the essential ideas may be rapidly re¬
sumed. The logic of common sense compels us in defiance of
Parmenides to affirm that not-being in some sort is, since error
237 b is. We do utter the word “not-being” and must apply it to
23SD something or hold our tongues, if we would avoid self-contradic-
238239 b tion. Taken absolutely, it is unutterable and unspeakable. The
242 a sophistical catch about not-being has always been too much for
the Eleatic, who is here the mouthpiece of Plato.

Cf. infra, p. 477 The many-headed sophist, who compels us to prove that not-
being is, when charged with error rejects all appeals to the

240 a senses and experience and argues from language and words only.

We must meet him on his own ground and generalize the mean¬
ing attached to the word eidolon or illusion. And this will compel

241 d us to “lay hands on our father Parmenides” and insist that in a

242 c sense not-being is and being is not. The pre-Socratics who have

243 a told us mythical tales about being and not-being have talked

over our heads regardless of our understanding. The Eleatics
say that being is one. Others affirm that beings are many, that
242 e they intermarry and have offspring and wage war with one
another continuously, as Heraclitus says, or in cycles alternating
243 b 7 with cycles of peace, as the laxer muse of Empedocles declares.

Phaedo 96 A When he was young the Eleat thought he understood the ex¬
pression “not-being,” but now — look at it! We think being more

SOPHIST

3°l

intelligible, but under scrutiny it may prove no less puzzling. 243 c
Since we are at a stand, we may challenge these thinkers to tell
us what they mean when they utter the word “being” and when 244 a
they affirm that being is one. Are one and being names of the 244 b
same thing, or are there two distinct names and therefore more 244 cd
than one being? If being is, as Parmenides says, a whole, is the 244 Eff.
whole composed of parts, is whole an attribute of beings or is
being identical with whole and therefore detached from itself? 245 c
This logic of the Parmenides (the text is sometimes doubtful)
culminates in the sentence which we took for the motto of the 24s e
Parmenides. supra, P. 290

So much for those who refine about being and not-being. But 245 e 6
there are others who approach the problem in a different way. 246 ab
There is a sort of battle of the giants between the materialists
who recognize the existence of only what they can touch, and
the “friends of ideas,” who wage war with them warily from 246 ab
invisible heights, affirming that bodiless ideas are the real es- 246 bc
sence. The material bodies and the “truth” of the other school on Theaet. 162 a
they break up and comminute in their arguments, and pro¬
nounce them not essence but a flux of becoming. And so the Iheaet. i79 d
battle rages. Can we exact an explanation from them? — prefer- 246d
ably by reforming the materialists whose responses will then be
more valid, or failing that, by extracting a few admissions from
them. They must admit that there are bodies that are alive, 246 e
that the soul or principle of life is something, and that some 247 ab
souls are just by the presence of justice, which therefore must be Phaedo ioo D
something. And surely soul, justice, and wisdom are neither ^rot^33oCD
visible nor tangible, and are therefore immaterial. Some of them, 247V1 4
replies Theaetetus, will affirm the soul to be material, but will be
ashamed to say this of wisdom. They are indeed improved if
they are ashamed of anything, for nothing can abash the true- 247 c
sown sons of the soil, but they insist that whatever they cannot cf. on 243 b
squeeze with their hands is nothing at all. But we may chal- 247 de
lenge them (and, as will appear, the immaterialists) by a defini- e(Lo4eb7)

. 6 c a r U* U U / „ ^ OnGorg. 503AB

tion of our own: Anything which has any power whatever to
act or be acted upon exists. Being is power or potentiality. 247 e 3-4
It is a provisional definition which we may suppose them to 248 a
accept with us, subject to change. The “friends of ideas” dis¬
tinguish essence, with which we commune by the soul, from

302

WHAT PLATO SAID

248 b generation or becoming, with which we enter into communica¬
tion by the body. But surely this communication is either ac-
248 d tion or suffering, and hence being. The soul knows and essence
is known. To know and be known are actions or passions, or

248 e both, and so a kind of motion. We cannot really suppose that

that which exists in the completest sense has neither motion,
life, soul, nor intelligence, but abides unmoved, mindless, sol¬
emn, and sanctified.

The practical result for the main argument of this edifying
digression, which has been mistakenly supposed to mark a revo¬
lution in Plato’s later philosophy, is that motion (as well as the
Parmenidean rest) must be recognized as being or entity. There

249 b can be no intelligence if nothing moves, nor yet if all things

move. The very idea of identity cannot exist without rest and
stability. The philosopher then can admit the dogma of neither
extremist school, but, returning to common sense, he must rec-

249 cd ognize as being, in the formula of the boys, “all that moves or

does not move.”

250 a To resume the question of being: Motion and rest are both

250 b being, and being itself is a third notion in our mind distinct from

250 c 6 either. Being then, as such, neither moves nor is at rest. Whith-
Parmen. 135 b 8 er shall we turn our thoughts to clear this up? Or shall we con¬
clude that since being and not-being are equally obscure, we can
only endeavor to arrange our own language about them in the

251 a most suitable way? It is the old problem of the one and the
Phii eb.1 1 4 de many. A man is many parts and is many predicates. This pro-

251 b vides a feast for young disputants and late learners. How can

251 cd one thing many? Man is man and good is good. But you can¬

not say man is good. We answer them with a general challenge:
Do you admit that some “beings” communicate with or partici-

252 ab pate in others or not? If not, all schools are alike overthrown.

252 c All of them, if they say anything, have to use the words “be”

and “is” and “apart from others” and “by itself,” thereby re-
On Theaet.3i6? c futing themselves out of their own mouths, like the ventrilo-

252 d quist. On the other hand, if all ideas can blend, contradictories

will mingle and rest will move and motion be at rest. There re-

253 a mains the supposition that, like vowels and consonants or high

and low notes, some ideas will and some will not unite with few,

253 cd many, or all others. There is needed an expert to determine

SOPHIST

3°3

these relations, namely, the dialectician, who can divide by gen¬
era or classes and not mistake the same for the other or the 253 d
other for the same. t‘Se37 ab’ 43

Seeking the sophist, we have found the philosopher. The ct. 231 A, 231 E
sophist takes refuge in the darkness of not-being, and the philos- 254 a
opher was hard to discover from the excess of light in which he Rep. 518 ab
dwells. Let us select a few of the largest ideas or classes, and if 254 cd
we cannot attain to perfect clearness about being and not-being,
we may at least know what to say of them within the limits of
the present inquiry and may with impunity affirm that not-
being really is not-being. We have now three kinds (ideas):
motion, rest, and being. We predicate “to be” or “is” of both 255 a
motion and rest. They cannot either of them be being. They
both partake of the same and the other. These are two addi¬
tional classes, making five in all. Let us consider their relations. 255 e
Motion is other than rest. It is by participation in being. It is
other than the same and so it is not the same, but it is the same 256 a
with itself by participation in the same. Then we need not scru¬
ple to say that it is and is not the same. It is by participation in
the same in relation to itself, and is not by communion with the
other which separates it from the same. This principle applies
to all classes, genera, or ideas. The nature of the “other” makes
each not to be, and participation in being makes each to be. 256 e
These and similar paradoxes need not trouble us now that we
have admitted that the classes (ideas) communicate with one
another. Furthermore, not-being does not mean the opposite 257 b
of being, but only something other. Negation does not signify 257 c
oppositeness, but the not before the words, or rather things that
follow it only shows that they are something else. The nature of
the other is as minutely subdivided as is knowledge. The not- R5epC476
beautiful is the other of the nature of the beautiful. The not- |yL?. 201 e
beautiful is the setting of (something) that is, in opposition to
(something else) that is, an antithesis, in fact, of being to being. 257 e
And so every negative term denotes being as truly as does its
corresponding affirmative. Parmenides forbade us to seek that 258 c
which is not, or not-being. But we have so far transgressed his
prohibition that we have found the idea or definition of not- 258 de
being: The portion of the subdivided nature of the other that is
opposed to each several subdivision of being really and truly is

3° 4

WHAT PLATO SAID

258 E
259 AB

Cf. 247 DE
259 CD

259

259 E

260 B-D

261 BC

261 B 6
Cratyl. 430 D 9 ff.

Cratyl. 424 E ff.

263 A

263 B 9
Euthyd. 284 C 8
263 D

263 E

On Theaet. 189 E
Theaet. 161 E
At. De an. 428 a
26

264 B

266 DE

that which is not or not-being. We are not speaking of the oppo¬
site of being, which we long ago dismissed. That which is not,
is, and that which is, is not, in countless ways. Let anyone who
denies this give better reasons than ours or hold his peace. But
merely to play with the contradictions and paradoxes of which
we have spoken is not refutation, but the mark of a novice in
reasoning. To try to isolate everything from everything else is
the destruction of all reasoning, for speech and the sentence
{logos) arise from the conjunction or communion of kinds
(ideas).

We have proved that not-being is, and thus that error and
illusion are possible. But as a last resort the sophist may argue
that speech and opinion or phantasia are not among the kinds
that can participate in not-being. Theaetetus is discouraged by
this new obstacle. But the Eleat reminds him that they have al¬
ready overcome many difficulties, and faint heart never cap¬
tured a city. The little episode shows that Plato is at last re¬
solved to anticipate at any cost of dialectical prolixity every pos¬
sible objection. And it serves as a transition from the meta¬
physics of logic to the elements of syntactical logic that follow.
Some words in sequence yield a meaning, while the continuous
juxtaposition of others does not. There are nouns, the names of
things, and verbs, the names of actions. Neither nouns nor
verbs alone will make a sentence. The first conjunction of a
noun and a verb is the primary and simplest sentence. Every
sentence must have a quality. The quality of “Theaetetus sits”
is to be true, that of “Theaetetus is flying” is false. The true
logos says things that are (beings) about Theaetetus, the false
says things other than those that are, namely, that are not (not-
beings). It states not-beings as beings. The outcome of all this
tiresome analysis, then, is the common sense of Cratylus 385 B 7
and 430. Thus false speech is a wrong synthesis of nouns and
verbs. The extension of the argument to phantasia and thought
is easy. For thought is merely internal speech, and phantasia is
a blend of sensation and opinion. The task was not endless
after all. We have made good progress, and it only remains
to apply our results to the definition of the “sophist,” which was
held up by the objection that falsehood is impossible. We can
now reaffirm the subdivision of the art of illusion into the eikas-

SOPHIST

3° 5

tic and phantastic species. The eikastic produces illusory (objec¬
tive) images, the phantastic illusory impressions in the victim’s
mind. The phantastic again subdivides according as the worker
of illusion uses other instruments or only his own body. Dis¬
missing the first for others to analyze, we bisect the second by
knowledge and ignorance. Some such imitators know what they
imitate; others do not. Similarly, when the imitation is not of
material things, but of such ideas as justice, many try to “imi¬
tate” in words and deeds the true form of justice and virtue
without knowledge. We have no name for this distinction, for
early thinkers were too lazy or stupid to make and mark the
distinctions that thought requires. Let us call the one kind doxo-
mimetic and the other factual-mimetic. The sophist belongs to
the first and we spy a rift for dichotomy in that. The simple-
minded do not know that they do not know. But the sophist
has tumbled about in argument too much not to suspect his own
ignorance.

One more doublet and we are done. The insincere producer of
illusion in the mind of a crowd by long speeches may be called
“demologic.” He who does it in private by reducing his inter¬
locutors to self-contradiction is not the sophos (or wise man),
but with a derivative appellation we at last perceive the long-
sought and finally found real and true — sophist. In conclusion
this resultant definition of the sophist is summed up in the
manner of the definition of the angler.

We cannot, then, infer the immaturity of Plato’s thought
either from the satisfaction that he expresses in the solution of
the “problem” of not-being or from the supposed defects of his
terminology from the point of view of modern post-Aristotelian
logic and grammar. It was natural that he should be pleased at
having analyzed so explicitly that there was no excuse for fur¬
ther misunderstanding a puzzle which in fact caused consider¬
able confusion of thought in the age before logic; and to describe
this complacency as his surprise at the “discovery of the con¬
cept” is meaningless. In no intelligible sense is the explicit state¬
ment of the distinction between the copula is and the is of exist¬
ence a discovery of the concept. That was “discovered” and
adequately described, if not by Socrates himself, then certainly
in the quest for the definition in the minor so-called Socratic di-

Epin. 975 D
Symp. 215 C 7

267 E

On Theaet. 172 C

268 B

On Hipp. Min.
373 A

Supra, p. 297

221 A ff.

258 D ff.

3°6

WHAT PLATO SAID

alogues. Plato analyzes the problem of not-being in terms of the
Greek idiom that was the chief cause of the special form which
257 b it took for the Greek mind of his day. His conclusion that not-
258E-9A being is otherness may sound quaint to ears unaccustomed to
Par men. 160 cs Greek idiom and familiar with modern languages and post-
Aristotelian terminology. But it was sufficient for Plato’s pur¬
pose and would make the matter clear to all intelligent contem¬
poraries. It is irrelevant for the modern logician to object that
when we say a thing “is not” the attention is fixed not on the
something other that it is, but on the bare fact of a specific nega¬
tion. That may be more or less true, psychologically speaking,
but it is nothing to Plato’s purpose, which was to dispose of a
vexatious fallacy in terms of the idiom that gave rise to it, and
at the same time to reserve the right from the point of view of
Tim. 37 e metaphysics and religion to speak of, or hint at, an absolute and
transcendental Being.

It is true, then, that his generally correct practice does not
prove that Plato had explicitly thought out a logical theory and
established a fixed and consistent terminology. But neither does
his failure to go out of his way to mention any particular point
of logical theory or his lack of any particular term found in
Aristotle or later logicians prove that his own theory was posi¬
tively wrong or that he was himself confused with regard to any
important principle or distinction. It would be admitted that
the occasional direct conversion of a universal affirmative where
it does not affect the argument or is obviously dramatic cannot
On Euthyph. 12 A outweigh the evidence of the Euthyphro and other dialogues
that Plato understood the principle perfectly. It ought to be
equally recognized that if he sometimes shows a clear under-
on 257 b standing of the distinction between contrary and contradictory,
his occasional careless use of the terms in ways that do not
affect the argument creates no presumption that he had forgot¬
ten or lost sight of the distinction. To prove that his theory was
positively mistaken or that his mind was confused with regard
to any important logical principle, it must be shown either that
his practice is distinctly wrong or that his partial statements of
the theory are defective in such a way as to imply real miscon¬
ceptions. He was not trying to work out an Aristotelian science
and system of logic. He was only trying to deal with such cur-

SOPHIST

307

rent fallacies as actually inconvenienced him. We cannot infer Cf*(Loeeb)436BC
that he did not understand the function of the copula merely
because he does not happen to say as explicitly as x^ristotle once
or twice does that other verbs may be analyzed into copula plus
predicate. The criticism of the logic of the Sophist by Apelt,

Grote, Zeller, and many Aristotelians and modern logicians
takes too little account of these considerations of Plato's style
and purposes, and of the differences between Greek and English
idiom. Greek idiom, for example, made it natural and almost
inevitable to attach the negative to the predicate and not to the
copula. Plato's practice in this regard cannot be used to show
that he misunderstood the matter. It is equally irrelevant to
insist overmuch on the deficiencies, from the point of view of
modern grammar, of Plato's analysis of sentence structure and 262 a.
the incompleteness of his terminology for the distinction be¬
tween the predicate and the copula. His account of the matter
is true as far as it goes and is sufficient for his purposes. He was
not interested in drawing finer grammatical distinctions than
were needed in his own dialectic, any more than he wished to
distinguish nuances of synonyms that were irrelevant to the ar¬
gument in hand. How many modern thinkers are conscious of
such distinctions or find occasion to use them except when they
are compiling Latin grammars? We may note, then, but need
not make too much of the fact that his grammatical terminology
is only the germ of that which, developed and elaborated by
Aristotle, the Stoics and the long line of grammarians ancient,
mediaeval, and modern, is still a theme of scholastic controversy
today.

POLITICUS

257 C 7
258 B
284 B
286 B 10

272 C, 301, 302

257 ab

258 B

237 A ff.
268 D-275

The dramatis personae of the Politicus are those of the Soph¬
ist, with the addition of a younger Socrates, who is a silent
listener there and in the Theaetetus, but here takes the place of
Theaetetus as respondent. It is represented as a continuation
of the Sophist, which it quotes, and is closely related in thought
to the Laws and, by the myth, to the Timaeus. Its style and its
tone of mixed pathos and satire in the reluctant abandonment
of impracticable ideals mark it as probably late. But there is
nothing in the thought to necessitate or strongly confirm this
view. It cannot be shown that Zeller, Grote, or more recently
Pohlmann are led into error in the interpretation of the thought
by their assumption that it precedes the Republic , and the at¬
tempts of others to show that the doctrine must be late are
either fallacious or prove at the most that it is genuinely Pla¬
tonic.

After some brief introductory banter and exchange of compli¬
ments between Socrates and Theodorus, the Eleatic stranger
abruptly enters upon the quest for the definition of the states¬
man with the standardized opening: Does he not claim to be a
representative of some science or art, and, if so, shall we not be¬
gin our inquiry with a dichotomy, a classification of the sciences
in order to “locate” him more exactly? From this point to the
end the dialogue is a didactic exposition by the Eleatic with the
younger Socrates as an assenting and largely monosyllabic re¬
spondent.

Much of the dialogue is devoted to the illustration and, as
some critics affirm, the perfection, of the method of dichotomy
set forth in the Sophist. In form it is an attempt to define by
this method the true statesman — to discriminate him sharply
from other rulers and caretakers and in particular from the poli¬
ticians, sophists, rhetoricians, and generals who usurp the name
at Athens. This problem, which corresponds to the discussion
of being and not-being in the Sophist, is illustrated and its tedi¬
um relieved by a myth, and by elaborate analogies and illustra-

308

POLITICUS

3°9

tions from those arts which like politics begin by selecting, 308 D£E.
separating from dross and purifying their materials. Remarks
are made on the necessity of thus mingling jest with earnest, and 26s d 8
of employing concrete imagery or patterns to illustrate abstract 277 d
thought. The charge of undue prolixity is anticipated. Our ob- 283 Bf., 286 b
ject is the elucidation of sound method, and for that no briefer £lw?683E
treatment of the theme would suffice. cf. 261 de

In general, Plato tells us, the clever men who proclaim that 284 eh
all things are subject to number and measure have neglected to ^
observe that there are two distinct types or ideas of measure- 283 e 10
ment: the purely relative mathematical measurement of one
thing against another, and the measurement in reference to g
fixed, absolute standards of the suitable, the just mean or meas-
ure in every art and procedure. “Long” and “short” as terms of
censure applied to a philosophical discussion have no meaning
except in the latter sense. That such absolute standards exist
Plato cannot delay to prove except by a summary form of argu¬
ment employed in the same way to cut short discussion in the
Phaedo and Timaeus.

The proposition to be proved is indissolubly bound up with
another proposition which the opponent can hardly reject. In
this case, as surely as the various arts and sciences exist, so sure¬
ly is the ju erpLov or absolute measure of fitness a reality. For all
arts and sciences postulate it. This simple thought has often
been misunderstood. It is implied in the doctrine of ideas, in
Plato’s polemic against mere relativity, and even in the remark
attributed to Prodicus in the Phaedrus: He said that he was the 267 b
sole discoverer of the true art of speech; what was needed was
neither long nor short speeches but commensurate ones. The
fact that it is explicitly stated “for the first time” in the Politi-
cus proves no more than does the fact that it is never stated
again. Plato happened to formulate it only once, but it is clear¬
ly involved in the scorn of the Republic 531 A for measuring
things by one another.

To return now to the definition by dichotomy: The art of the 258 d-JS9 d
statesman, which may be generalized to include that of the
king, master, and ruler of a house, as well as that of the compe¬
tent adviser of a king, is rather a theoretic than a merely prac-

3IQ

WHAT PLATO SAID

tical art. The king does not work with his hands, but with his
mind.

Some theoretic arts are content with judging; others issue
360 commands. The royal art commands and is not merely a spec¬
tator. A further division points out that it traffics in its own

260 e 7 commands and does not, like heralds, merely transmit the orders
Prot. 313 d of others.

261 bc Again, all such commands aim at a result, a production, a

genesis, and all generation subdivides into animate and inani¬
mate. The king commands animate creatures, not singly but in

261 de herds. We might jump at once to the conclusion that he cora-
cf on pwieb. 16c mands a human herd, but sound method bids us continue the

division step by step till we reach man, not troubling ourselves

262 b 4 overmuch about names for the distinctions that we note or
264 b 4 about the charge of prolixity, or the metaphysical problem of

b the precise distinction between subdivisions that mark ideas and
263 b those that only break up the matter into its parts. This slower
and more cautious procedure has the further advantage of sug¬
gesting some salutary reflections. It will save us from taking

262 d ourselves too seriously. We shall not subdivide mankind into

Greeks and — barbarians, as those intelligent birds, the cranes,

263 d might distinguish cranes and — others. And we shall only smile
266 c if our dichotomies at one stage bracket man with the sturdiest

266 d and least fastidious of creatures — the pig. A scientific procedure
on Panne 11^130 is not concerned with degrees of dignity.

The elaboration of the method on this principle, which doubt¬
less had a biological interest also, finally distinguishes the king
267 a-c as the shepherd of the hornless, biped herd of men. The entire
Cf'3°sEcl" process is resumed in a humorous definition in the style of the
supra, P. S9i Sophist, ttoXltikov coming in at the end.

267 d But all this is obviously insufficient for our purpose. We have

267 e not really separated the king from the various claimants who,

268 c in fact, are confused with him. We must make a fresh start and
268 d intermingle jest with our earnest in the form of a great myth.
268 e Deep truths are hidden in many ancient fables. The legend

268E-269A that the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes reversed the course of
the sun and stars and the tradition of a reign of Cronos and of
269 ab early men born from the earth are dispersed fragments of one

POLITICUS

3”

great truth which explains many things and which no one has
expounded ere now.

The world in alternate cycles revolves one way, guided by
God, and the reverse, by its own spontaneous motion, as a thing
endowed with life and intelligence by the great architect. To
abide ever unchanged pertains (by metaphysical necessity) only
to the divinest things. Body is not of this order, and the uni¬
verse, though endowed with many blessings by its author, it
must be admitted, partakes of body. Only the leader of all
movements can always turn itself the same way. The world
cannot do that; nor may we suppose that God turns it different
ways, nor that two gods with opposite intent cause its contrary
movements. There remains only the supposition that at one
time it is guided by its Creator and derives from him an artifi¬
cial immortality, and at another, left to itself, revolves of its
own motion through countless cycles of time.

Let us trace the consequences of this assumption. All changes
are deleterious to living things, and this, the greatest change,
would be most destructive of all. When the cycle opposite ours
began, all living creatures grew younger, white hairs turned to
black, the man became the child, the child dwindled into the
infant, and the infant shrank to nothing and vanished away. It
logically follows that in that cycle men were born again from the
earth, not from one another. This tradition, handed down to us
from those who lived at the end of that cycle and the beginning
of ours, is wrongly doubted by many skeptics today.

It is to that cycle also that the legend of the age of Cronos re¬
fers, when all things grew spontaneously and there were no
governments and no marrying and giving in marriage. Men
were shepherded and cared for by beings superior to themselves,
the gods who divided up the government of the world. They did
not have to labor the earth, and bivouacked in the open air of a
temperate clime. Where they happier than we are in this age of
Zeus? Who can say? If they made good use of their opportuni¬
ties and their gift of conversing with the animals for the acquisi¬
tion of knowledge about the distinctive differences of each, it is
easy to see that they were infinitely happier. If they idly feasted
and told stories to each other and to the beasts, the decision
is no less easy.

Tim. 22 CD
Symp. 189 DE,
190 B 7

On Phaedr. 247 C
269 C

269 D

Symp. 208 A
Tim. 38 A, 41 AB
48 AB, 52 A

269 E 6

Rep. 380 D ff.

270 A

Laws 896 E
270 A 2
270 A 5
Tim. 41 B

270 A 4

270 BC
Rep. 380 DE,
404 A

Laws 797 D-8 A
Tim. 22 C
Crit. 109 D
Laws 677 A

270 DE

271 A

271 B 3
271 D

271 E

Laws 713 DE

272 A

Pind. Ol. 2. 69
272 BC

Rep. 420 E (Loeb)
272 D

312

WHAT PLATO SAID

But awaiting some trustworthy revelation about these mat¬
ters, let us turn to the end and purport of our tale. When the
373 e 5 appointed end of the cycle came, the steerer of the universe let
go the helm, retired to his post of observation, and inborn and
373 a inevitable desire began to turn the world the other way. All
the departmental gods abandoned their provinces. The great
world felt the sudden shock of reversed motion, and, quivering
through all its frame, brought about another cataclysmic de-
Laws 677 a struction of life. In course of time the tumult and the confusion
settled down into a kind of order and calm, and the world
governed itself and all within it remembering and imitating as
373 b 1 far as might be the teaching of its author and father, at first
Tim. 28 c more precisely, later less accurately. The cause of its tendency
to degenerate, and the source of all evil, is its material constitu-
Sympm'i9sc tion inherited from the original chaos before the cycles began.
Tim. 46 C. 53 AB The order introduced by the Creator is the cause of all good.

While it was guided by the Creator and in the first years after he
cnt. «oEi,_i2i abandoned the helm, the good tended to prevail. But with the
lapse of time came forgetfulness and the encroachments of the
273 d ancient disharmonies, until finally the god who established this
order, being concerned for it, lest dissolved in the storm it sink
back into the realm of chaos and old night, took his place at the
helm again and healing the harms and diseases incurred in the
Phileh.Ys D 8 cycle of its self-government so preserved it an ageless and death-
11.xn.323 less creation.

273 E

274 B 1

273 E

274 A

274 C 4

Prot. 322 B
Laws 681 A
Prot. 321 CD
On Laws 679 B 1
654 A

274 E

Supra, p. 310

275 A

271 E
Laws 713 DE

But to return to the beginning of our tale and its application
to our theory of politics. When our present period began, all the
strange phenomena which we said marked the beginning of the
divine cycle were reversed. Men were no longer born from the
earth but from one another, and being no longer cared for by
their divine guardians, they had to take the first painful steps
in civilization by themselves. And they would have failed and
perished by starvation or been torn apart by the wild beasts but
for the gifts of the gods as recalled in legend — fire from Prome¬
theus, the mechanical arts from Hephaestus and Athene, and
seeds and plants from others. And the point and application of
all this is that in our first attempt to define the king, we failed to
distinguish the kings of the age of Cronos, superior beings who
took entire charge of the flock, from the human kings of today.

POLITICUS

3*3

who will have a more limited and specific function, which it is
incumbent on us to discover and distinguish from the work of
their subordinates and all other claimants. For our present rul¬
ers and politicians are not much better or wiser than their sub¬
jects in respect of culture and breeding.

This myth incidentally shows, as do the Timaeus and the
Critias, that Plato retained in old age his mythopoeic imagina¬
tion and his plastic mastery of language. Its relevancy to the
argument of the Politicus, Plato explicitly has told us, is that it
compels us to distinguish the mythical ideal of a shepherd of the
people, who plays Providence to his flock, from the modern ruler
who leaves other specialists to feed, clothe, and house them and
confines himself to his specific task of government. In other
words, it emphasizes the demand often repeated in Plato for a
precise definition of the specific function and service of the royal
or kingly art, and, as Zeller says, rejects with a touch of (“wist¬
ful” he should have added) irony ideals drawn from a supposed
state of nature. The Homeric description of a ruler as shepherd
of his people was once a reality. Now there are many who dis¬
pute his exclusive claim to this function and deny that there is
any political art. All this, of course, is not to be taken literally.
It is a symbolic expression of Plato’s recognition that the gov¬
ernment of an ideal tyrant is impracticable. So Renan or Mr.
H. G. Wells might have admitted that their conception of gov¬
ernment by a committee of mandarins or samurai of science was
only a fancy. It has been argued that this marks a change from
the feeling of the Republic, a difference due to Plato’s Sicilian
experiences. And it is sometimes said that the Laws exhibits a
return to the belief in the beneficent tyrant. Plato’s moods and
the emphasis that he lays on particular ideas may or may not
thus alter from dialogue to dialogue. But he did not really re¬
gard his Republic as realizable, and the beneficent tyrant in the
Laws is invoked only as the easiest and speediest means of ac¬
complishing the revolution. The serious doctrine of the Laws is
essentially that which he goes on to expound in the Politicus.

There is none who can be trusted in politics with the absolute,
arbitrary power that we yield to experts in the sphere of their
own arts, and that would be the ideal of government if we could
find the expert. Man is the hardest creature to govern, and he

275 BC

On Euthyd. 291 B

Rep. 372 D (Loeb)

276 B
Rep. 488 B

Cf. supra, pp. 66 ff.

Laws 709 E

296 B ff ., 297 A-C

300 E 11 ff.

301 E 1

293 A ff.

294 A 7, 295 E

297 D 5

298-99

On Laws 766 A

3H

WHAT PLATO SAID

292 D
292 E 9
301 D
Laws 875 A

Rep. 520 B 6
301 E

294 B 3 ff.
294 D 10
295 AB

On Laws 875 D

303 B ff.

303 E— 4 A

304 CD

304 E-s A

305 B ff.
309 C

Laws 773 AB,
930 A
310-n
306-7
306 D 6-E 10
307 D
307 E

OnTheaet. 144 AB
Rep. 375 C

Rep. 338 D (Loeb)
Pind. Pyth. II. 87
291, 301
302 C ff.

who knows how to rule is king, whether he rules or not. But
there are few experts in the arts and fewer in the art and science
of government. Neither the democracy nor the mob of the rich
could ever acquire this art. No king bee, we say, arises in the
human hive, no man of such superhuman quality of mind and
body that he can be trusted to govern as an expert in disregard
of the written law. In default of that we must reluctantly put
up with the second best, the government of fixed, inflexible law
that cannot adapt itself nicely and equitably to the individual
case.

In conclusion, the ruler or king is further discriminated, as in
the Euthydemus and Gorgias, from the pretenders or subordinate
ministers who usurp his name, the rhetorician, the general, the
dicast. Lastly, his special task is defined. As implied in the Me-
no and Euthydemus and stated in the Republic , he is to teach
virtue and inculcate right opinion. And that his teaching may
be effective and the seed fall on good ground he is, like the rulers
of the Republic and the Laws , to control marriages and the prop¬
agation of the race, especially with a view to blending by both
eugenics and education the oppositions of the energetic and se¬
date temperament.

The accompanying classification and criticism of forms of
government imply no change of opinion unless we assume that
Plato was bound to repeat himself verbatim. The classification
of the Republic is first the ideal state governed by philosophic
wisdom, whether kingdom or aristocracy, and then in progres¬
sive decadence timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny. The
Politicus apparently recognizes seven states: one, the right state
(302 C), the only polity deserving the name (293 C), in which
the rulers are €7ri<rTi7//om. Six others are obtained by distin¬
guishing the good and bad forms of the three types recognized in
ordinary Greek usage. We thus get monarchy, or royalty, and
tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy, and democracy, lawful and
lawless. The differences are due mainly to the necessity of pre¬
senting a continuous descending scale in the Republic. This
leaves no place for a good form of democracy or a good mon¬
archy apart from the ideal kingdom. The fundamental distinc¬
tion of the scientific state once noted, Plato plays freely with the
conventional terminology, and no inferences can be drawn from

POLITICUS

3i5

his “contradictions.” There are countless forms of government
if one cares to look beyond the conspicuous eibr]. In the Repub¬
lic the good oligarchy, the aristocracy of the Politicus , is a tim-
archy. In the Menexenus the good democracy of Athens is an
aristocracy governed by kings! In the Laws , from the historical
point of view, all governments are regarded as variations of the
two mother-types, the Persian absolutism and the Athenian
democracy. But in respect of the ease with which reform may
be effected, the tyranny ranks first, the kingdom second, a cer¬
tain type of democracy third, and oligarchy last. The signifi¬
cance of the opposition of the two temperaments for the defini¬
tion of the virtues and the antinomies of the minor dialogues is
discussed elsewhere. Grote strangely affirms that these difficul¬
ties are not touched in the Politicus .

Rep. 544 D

238 D
693 D

PHILEBUS

Apol. 23 C
Rep. 539 B

Rep. 454 A (Loeb)

16 C

Cratyl. 425 A
On Meno 76 E

IS C
16 AB

AJP, IX, 282

The Philebus was selected by Dionysius of Halicarnassus as a
type of Plato’s simpler Socratic style. The majority of recent
critics more plausibly see signs of Plato’s later manner in the
poverty of the dramatic setting, the ponderousness of the jests,
and the curious elaboration of phrasing and logical framework.
The introduction presents again the problem of the one and the
many and the objections to the theory of ideas advanced in the
Parmenides , and, like the Parmenides , but more explicitly, hints
that these puzzles are due to the limitations of human reason.
They are a game for boys and are the source of both conscious
and unconscious eristic. It bids us disregard them and, assum¬
ing ideas, to deal with them and our subject according to the
true dialectical method set forth in the Phaedrus.

I11 the Philebus this method is said to be a gift of the gods de¬
livered to mankind by Prometheus together with a most radiant
fire and transmitted to us by the ancients who were wiser than
we and nearer to the gods. This playful mysticism and a few
apparent ambiguities in the description of the method have
made this page one of the most frequently and gravely misin¬
terpreted passages in the entire Platonic text. Its plain and still
useful logical meaning has been distorted by metaphysical inter¬
pretation, and it has even been used in support of the attribu¬
tion to Plato himself of the meaningless “later” doctrine that
the ideas are numbers. We need here only note that Plato does
not state that these metaphysical problems must be solved be¬
fore we can so proceed. Pie merely says that we must come to
such an understanding about them as will prevent the puzzle of
the one and many from confusing our inquiry. We have no rea¬
son to look for a solution of them in the subsequent course of the
argument. None is given. There was, as we have seen, none to
offer. The attempts of modern scholars to find one are very in¬
genious. But they are not supported by Plato’s words, and they
proceed on the erroneous assumption that he thought it possible
to give any other than a poetical and mythical account of the

316

PHILEBUS

31 7

absolute, or to say more of the noumenon than that it exists.
The elaborate apparatus of classifications and categories em¬
ployed to decide whether pleasure or intelligence is more nearly
akin to the good is due, apart from Plato’s interest in dialectical
exercise, to his unwillingness to treat the problem of the good in
isolation. His imagination and religious feeling require him to
associate the ethical good of man with the principles of order,
harmony, measure, beauty, and good in the universe. We thus
get many interesting analogies with the Timaeus , but no solu¬
tion of the problem of ideas. The direct classification and esti¬
mate of the different species of pleasure and intelligence, which
was all the ethical problem required, is subordinated to a larger
classification of all things which, however, deepens and enriches
our conception of the psychological and ontological relations of
the elements of merely human good and happiness.

The real subject of the Philebus , then, is ethics. It completes
the theory of the Platonic ethics by elaborating the doctrine of
the negativity and comparative worthlessness of the pleasures
of sense, already set forth in the Republic and distinctly sug¬
gested in the Gorgias, Phaedo , and Phaedrus. Its slight dramatic
framework is the transfer of the thesis that pleasure rather than
intelligence is the good, from Philebus , its original proponent, to
Protarchus, who is now to defend it, and the continuance of the
discussion under the figure of a contest between pleasure and
intelligence for the first and second prize of victory. Socrates
guides the debate, and the appeal of the young men not to baffle
them with unsolved puzzles and questions which they cannot
answer offhand marks the change of tone and method still more
apparent in the Laws from that of the so-called dialogues of
search. It is in fact sometimes fancied to be a reproduction for
students, not for the general public, of an actual debate under
the guidance of the master of the Academy. The question has
been raised why Plato reintroduces Socrates as leader of the dis¬
cussion after representing him as only a listener in the Sophist ,
Politicus, and Timaeus.

Was it because the Philebus is a return to the ethical problem
of the Protagoras and the Gorgias? There has also been much
speculation as to the cause of the recurrence to this theme at
this time. Was it due to the maintenance in the school of the

55 b

30 AB
6s ff.

19 B
5o E ff.
55 C

23 C 4

23 C ff.

583 B ff., 584 AB
Gorg. 493 E, 494 C
Phaedo 84 A 5
Phaedr. 258 E
Tim. 59 D 2

11 A-C

20 A

Rep. 453 C 7

On 627 B

WHAT PLATO SAID

3i8

27t.hi*i^CbI9Iff.lb thesis of Eudoxus reported by Aristotle that Pleasure is the
Good ? Such inquiries may add to the interest for the philological
student of the dialogue. But the imperturbable resolution to
answer them on insufficient evidence distracts attention from
what should be our main object, the ascertainment of Plato’s
own meaning, of which there need be no reasonable doubt. His
purpose is to clean up finally and explicitly the problem of the
12 cd relation of pleasure (in all senses of the word) to the good, which
had been discussed dramatically or incidentally in earlier dia¬
logues. In preparation or aid for the main ethical argument
Socrates introduces many valuable disquisitions on psychology
and logical method, from which, as we have said, overingenious
interpreters have tried to construct a system of Plato’s “later”
metaphysics. The sustained or repeated image of the contest for
the first or second prize grows somewhat wearisome. The face¬
tiousness is ponderous or far-fetched. The frequent resumes of
the state of the argument, though conducive to clearness, are
painfully didactic. The abruptness and the occasional obscurity
of the transitions called forth in antiquity a special treatise on
the transitions in the Philebus. There is little either of the earli¬
er dramatic charm or, except for the final sentence, of the stately
moral eloquence of the Laws . There is no myth. These literary
demerits, if such they be, are more than redeemed for the phil¬
osophic student by the subtlety and profundity of the ideas.

The good which all creatures desire and seek, Socrates argues,
20 d 1, 61 a must be something completely adequate and sufficient in itself.
iwb^aT8, ^ either pleasure or knowledge is the good, it must, like the
361 c-2 a hypothetical just and unjust man of the second book of the Re-
Cratyi. 384-85 public , and the theory in the Cratylus that language is con-
20 e3 ventional, stand the test of the extreme case — it must hold good
Arn EthhNdi‘c2?o97 when either is completely isolated from the other. There must
2oeV be no consciousness even of the pleasure and no pleasurable feel-
Butcf2I33B big associated with the pure intelligence. As nobody would ac-

22 a cept either of these alternatives, the good life is evidently some

61 a mixture of the two, and neither can claim the first award. The

23 b contest is for the second prize. Philebus’ divinity is not the
27 c 4-5 good, and to the retort, “neither is your mind,” Socrates in a

22 c much-misinterpreted sentence replies with Platonic unction,
“But it may be otherwise with the true divine mind.” The de-

PHILEBUS 319

cision, Socrates opines, requires an elaborate logical and psycho¬
logical machinery — other shafts, Plato says — which, however,
practically reduces to the distinguishing of the different species
of the indeterminate word “pleasure.” In order to distinguish
them, however, Socrates undertakes to assign them their places
in a quadripartite classification of all things. The mixed life sug¬
gests one term of this classification, and the mixture already re¬
ferred to of the finite and infinite in human thought and speech
concerning ideas and particulars supplies two other terms. The
cause of mixture is an obvious fourth. And Socrates jocosely
admits that if he needs it he will introduce as a fifth the cause
of separation. We have thus as our four terms peras , limit;
apeiron , the boundless or unlimited; the mikton , or mixed; and
the principle of aitia, or cause. Socrates explicitly says that this
classification is to be used as an instrument for the solution of
the ethical problem, Is pleasure or intelligence more nearly akin
to the good? He does so use it. The terms, however, suggest
obvious analogies with similar terms in other Platonic dialogues
and in other philosophies. Cause of course may be identified with
other expressions of that conception. The boundless suggests,
among other things, indeterminate matter or space. The princi¬
ple of limit may be taken to include anything that defines and
bounds, mathematical conceptions or definable ideas and forms.
The mixed could plausibly be associated with the concrete world
of things in which indeterminate matter is shaped by the form
and stamp of the idea. But Plato explicitly says that the mixed
includes the life of mingled pleasure and intelligence, as well as
every kind of mixture. There can be no objection to pointing
out these analogies or to the view that they were present to
Plato’s mind as they suggest themselves to us. The really de¬
batable question is, Did Plato mean what he said? Was he using
them instrumentally and in subordination to the problem ex¬
plicitly proposed for discussion at the beginning of the dialogue?
Or did he intend them to be taken as an enigmatic reconstruc¬
tion of his entire philosophy and expect us to equate them
mechanically and literally with the terms of which they remind
us in other dialogues? The presumptions are all in favor of the
interpretation that accepts Plato’s own statements and their
plain application to the course of the argument. There is no evi-

Symp. 219 B 4
Laws 962 D 4

19 B
32 B

22 A

16 C

23 D
23 D 10

23 B 7

Tim. 50 C 5
27 D 7

320

WHAT PLATO SAID

dence except the spurious letters and unverified and unverifiable
modern hypotheses that Plato ever expounded his philosophy in
this enigmatical and riddling fashion. His method everywhere is
to be almost painfully and minutely clear and explicit. He ha¬
bitually tells us precisely what he is trying to do and why he
does it. There is no reason except the ancient superstition of a
secret doctrine and the ingenuity of modern philological specula¬
tion for assuming that he would insinuate in this indirect and
obscure fashion important philosophical principles. The dra¬
matic fallacies and the thought-provoking inconclusiveness of
the minor Socratic dialogues are quite another matter. And
there are special reasons for the failure of the Protagoras and the
Theaetetus to conclude anything. Plato’s classifications are al¬
ways, like his definitions, the extemporized logical machinery
for a given purpose. They are not proposed as Aristotelian crys¬
tallizations of absolute truth. For example, the definitions of
the virtues in the fourth book of the Republic are significant
mainly in their context and are never repeated.

The four terms in the Philebus represent for the purposes of
the argument characteristic Platonic generalizations of the ideas
which they suggest by natural associations. Peras is a generali¬
zation of the idea of limit, whether it be the limitation of matter
by form, of chaos by the principle of order and measure, of appe¬
tite by reason, or of the indeterminate genus by a definite num¬
ber of species and subspecies. The apeiron cannot be confined to
boundless space or matter, though it doubtless suggests that
among other things. It also means the indefinite multiplicity of
particulars as opposed to the unity of the idea. It is the inde¬
terminate, anything that admits of more or less. But it espe¬
cially means for the argument of the Philebus the inherently in¬
satiate limitless character of undisciplined desire and appetite, a
493-94 conception which is found “already” in the Gorgias. The mikton
27 d 8-9 is almost illogically generalized to include any and every mix¬
ture of different or opposing principles. In some of its meanings
26 d 8 it might be equated with the offspring of the idea and of the
Tim. 50 d 3 mother of all generation in the Timaeus . But as the mixed life
of pleasure and intelligence, the meaning that is most relevant
2726b2£-7 to the argument of the Philebus , it obviously may not. Cause,
aitia> explains itself. It obviously includes every expression of

PHILEBUS

321

the idea of cause, scientific, metaphorical, metaphysical, and
theological. Plato himself tells us this in the Philebus and de¬
velops in this connection the teleology of the Phaedo and the
Timaeus, in a digression which he characterizes as “play” only
because the reasoning lacks the rigor of pure dialectics. Pie is
willing to risk the scorn of the smart fellows who affirm that all
is haphazard. If our bodies come from the universe, the mac¬
rocosm, must not the universe possess a soul from which our
souls are derived? If the principle of cause operating on the
other three principles produces in us and the things about us life
and the power of self-healing and regeneration in living bodies,
must not the same principle which may be fairly called “wis¬
dom” and “intelligence” contrive in the greater world of the
heavens beauty and other values in the order of years, months,
and the seasons?

It is the power of cause, then, that produces in the nature of
Zeus a kingly soul and a kingly intelligence, and other fair
things in others, by whatsoever name it pleases them to be
called. Intelligence, then, nous, belongs to the category of cause.

To return to the main ethical problem, this entire classifica¬
tion is actually employed in the Philebus for the conduct of the
argument. Pleasure is not akin to the good, because it is in¬
herently boundless, unlimited, insatiate. Intelligence is akin to
the good, because it is akin to the principle of cause and because
it is everywhere a principle of limit. And when the good for men
is proved to be the mixed life that pays due regard to both
pleasure and knowledge, intelligence again is awarded the pref¬
erence because the right quality and due proportions of every
mixture, including this one, are determined by intelligence. The
schematism of the argument is somewhat fancifully elaborated
in the manner of Ruskin. But the argument itself is perfectly
sound and perfectly intelligible, and there is not the slightest
need, and therefore not the slightest justification, for the gratui¬
tous assumption that the whole is a covert insinuation of a sys¬
tem of cosmogony and metaphysics. The suggestions of these
things are at the most suggestions which are falsified at once as
soon as they are pressed into the service of a formal system.
Such is the reasonable and most probable interpretation of the
Philebus. It may be further confirmed by the contradictions of

29 Eff.

30 E 6

29 A

Tim. 41 D

30 B

Symp. 188 A
Laws 886 A

30 D

On Cratyl. 400 E

31 A, 27 E
35 E, 41 D
28 C, 30 E

61 B
64 CD

322

WHAT PLATO SAID

31 AB

Phaedo 86 A

31 Dff.

32 B,E

32 C

33 C

34 A io

33 DE
34-35
35 CD

35 E

54 CD
Gorg. 493-94

36 A

36 C

37 E

38 A

41 B

42 ff.

At. Eth. Nic. 1152
b 31

On Phaedo 83 D

Unity, n. 147

, 42 B
Laws 663 B

the interpreters who endeavor to discover in it a hidden meta¬
physics, and by the misinterpretations of Plato’s text by which
such speculations are usually accompanied.

These preliminaries settled, we may note that the larger part
of the dialogue is occupied with the psychology and classifica¬
tion of pleasures, in preparation for the decision.

Pleasure and pain belong to the boundless but have their seat
in the mixed — the living body. The dissolution of the harmony
of such an organism is pain, its restoration pleasure. There is
also a pleasure of the soul in hope or expectation, dependent on
memory and recollection, which may be distinguished from
memory. Some affections of the body penetrate to the soul and
some remain unperceived or unconscious. Desire and appetite
for what is lacking involve memory of the opposite state of re¬
pletion. Desire then and impulse, the principle of life, pertain to
the soul. We thus apprehend a type of life consisting in alter¬
nate repletions and inanitions, pleasure and pain. But there is a
mixture of pleasure and pain when the pain of bodily inanition is
accompanied by expectation of immediate repletion.

Are all these pleasures true, or may some be false? Protarchus
vigorously sustains what would be the modern thesis that true
and false apply to ideas and judgments, but are meaningless in
relation to the actual feelings of pleasure and pain. Socrates in¬
sists on extending the analogy of false perceptions and opinions
to false, that is, unreal, illusory, harmful pleasures, as poetic and
colloquial usage in fact does.

It is generally said that Plato is mistaken in this. If he errs he
errs wilfully. For the critics have advanced no arguments which
Plato does not anticipate. His real meaning is that the habit of
pursuing pleasure, of thinking and speaking of it as the good,
tends to make the world of sense seem more real than that of
thought and spirit. The contrary is the truth. The world of
sense is a pale reflex of the world of ideas, and the pleasures of
sense are inherently unreal, illusory, and deceptive, and may in
sound logic be termed false, as fairly as the erroneous opinions
that accompany them. They are false because composed of
hopes and imaginations not destined to be fulfilled; false, be¬
cause exaggerated by the illusions of distance in time or con¬
trast; false, because what we mistake for positive pleasure is usu-

PHILEBUS

323

ally the neutral state, the absence of uneasiness, the cessation
of pain.

In support of the analogy between false perception and
“false” pleasure Plato sketches a psychology of perception and
false opinion. We perceive a distant object vaguely and in our
opinion or parole interieure name it perhaps wrongly, saying to
ourselves, “That dim thing is a man.” Or if we have a com¬
panion, our judgment expressed in speech becomes ulogos. There
is a scribe within us who writes out in the soul as it were in a
book the opinions, true or false, that result from the conjunction
of memory and the perceptions of sense. And after the scribe
there is an artist who paints images of these opinions. These
may be images of hopes and expectations relating to the future.
For all our lives we teem with hopes. The hopes of the good are
usually fulfilled, while those of the evil are in a sense false.
Again, pleasure and pain, as we said, admit of more or less, and
our object is to measure them rightly. But the illusions of dis¬
tance mislead us here as in perception, and they make the pleas¬
ures false as they do the perceptions.

Once more, we said that the destruction of our natural condi¬
tion is pain and its restoration pleasure. But there is an inter¬
mediate state which is neither, and which we may piously as¬
sume to be the condition of the gods. Wise men may tell us that
our bodies are always changing. But they forget that all the
changes do not affect our consciousness, do not reach the soul.
Other wise men, whose noble fastidiousness we may use for our
purpose without accepting their exaggerations, affirm that all
pleasures are illusory and negative — a mere release from pain.
This much at least is true, that the most intense pleasures and
pains belong to disease and an ill-conditioned body and soul, not
to health and excellence. They are like the scratching of an itch,
and the very extravagant language of the votaries of pleasure
betrays their nature.

We have already spoken of the mixture of pleasure and pain
that results from the contrast between the bodily state and the
expectation of the soul. But there are mixtures of the two in
the soul itself. Such are the pleasure of anger whereof Homer
speaks, the pleasure that we take in tragedy, and the strange
blend of feeling in phthonos or envy which is the principle of

42 C ff.

Rep. 583 D

37 ff-

On Theaet. 189 E

38 CD

39 A

39 B
39 C

39 E 5

40 B
39 E

41 D

41 E

42 AB
42 CD
3i D

45 E

Eryxias 405 DE
Laws 734 B

46 A 2

46 D

47 B
47 CD

47 E

II. XVIII. 109-10

48 Aff

324

WHAT PLATO SAID

49 C

50 A

50 D 7
Anth. Pal. XI. 85

51 B

Hipp. Maj. 297 E
Ar. Eth. Nic. 1118
a 2

51 D 1
Rep. 584 B
Tim. 65 A, 66 D

52 D

53 A

53 C
On 44 C

53 I>-54

53 E>

54 CD
35 E

55 A 7

55 B

Supra, p. 146
55 C

55 E

56 B
56 A

57 D 4

56 D

comedy. We laugh at the portrayal of the self-ignorance even
of our friends in life and on the comic stage — unless it is the
self-ignorance of the powerful whom we fear. Thus our reason¬
ing reveals to us in dirges, tragedies, and comedies, not only on
the stage, but in all the tragi-comedy of life that pains are com¬
mingled with our pleasures. The example drawn from phthonos
and comedy might be extended to the mixture of pleasure and
pain in fear and love and other feelings. But we must hurry on
and cannot make a night of it.

There are also unmixed pleasures — the pleasure of the aes¬
thetic contemplation of pure colors, pure mathematical forms,
that have little likeness to the scratching of an itch, the pleas¬
ures of smell, though trifling — and generally the pleasures of
learning and knowledge which are not conditioned by precedent
pain. Such pleasures are surely more true as well as more pure.
A little pure white is more truly white than a mass shaded with
admixture of other hues. Let this case stand for all.

We may also thankfully make use of the suggestions of other
subtle thinkers who tell us that pleasure is a genesis, a becom¬
ing, and not a substance or essence. Now all genesis is for the
sake of substance and not the reverse. We may distinguish gen¬
erally as the higher and more dignified thing that toward which
other things strive and for the sake of which they become. They
may be symbolized in the relation of the lover to the beloved.
This consideration also excludes pleasure as a genesis from the
category of the good. He who chooses the life of pleasure prefers
a life of generation and decay to the stable neutral state most
favorable to thought. And still further confirmation may be
found in the many absurdities to which the unqualified assump¬
tion that pleasure is the good leads.

We have analyzed and classified pleasures. It remains to dis¬
criminate the kinds of intelligence. There are two chief kinds:
those that make use of number and measure, of which carpen¬
try and architecture is the type, and those which like unscien¬
tific music, as in the playing of the flute, rely on “conjecture.”
But there is a further distinction which eristic reasoners over¬
look. Number and measure themselves are divided into two
kinds: the philosophical, which deals with pure numbers, and
the unphilosophical, which works with concrete numbers. But

PHILEBUS

3-5

higher still we as dialecticians must rank dialectics that treats
of being and sameness and similar ideas. We need not contend
with Gorgias who maintains that the art of persuasion is the
highest. That may or may not be the most serviceable to men.
We are speaking of the disinterested love and pursuit of truth.
If there is any such faculty and passion in our souls it is that we
mean. The study of nature and the origin of the cosmos is con¬
cerned with generation and matters of opinion, not with eternal
realities. Dialectics alone deals with the abiding, the true, the
pure, the things that ever remain the same and unmixed. To it
only belong those fairest words “reason” and “intelligence.”

We have now defined the species or kinds of both pleasure and
knowledge, and restating the original issue may pronounce our
decision.

Argument, as often in Plato, is described as an action, an ad¬
venture. The commingling of pleasure and intelligence is dram¬
atized. The doorkeeper may safely admit the less pure forms of
knowledge provided the higher knowledge is present also. A
man must in fact possess the imperfect knowledge of the senses
if he is to be able to find his way home. So, to change the figure,
we may safely let all forms of knowledge flow into the basin of
our Homeric waters-meet. But we must be more cautious in
dealing with the kinds of pleasure. Necessary pleasures must of
course be admitted. Pleasures themselves would be willing to
admit all forms of knowledge to association with them. But if
we consult wisdom and intelligence about the admission of
pleasures they would reply ambiguously, What pleasures? They
would certainly reject the maddening pleasures that are a hin¬
drance to the life of thought. But they would welcome the true
pleasures as akin to themselves. Our quest is the good in man
and in the All, and truth is surely its first constituent. A mix¬
ture that lacks measure and proportion is not a true order or
compounding but a disastrous disorder confounding its posses¬
sor. Thus the undefinable good takes refuge with the beautiful,
which is inseparable from measure and proportion. The affini¬
ties of the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of intelligence to these
three ideas will determine their rank in the mixed or good life.

The conclusion of the Philebus is one of the passages that

57 E

58 A
58 A-C

58 D 5

59 A3

Tim. 59 CD
59 C

59

60

62 CD

62 B 8
62 D

II. IV. 453

63 C 8

On Ion 536 E
63 D-64
Phacdo 66 CD

63 E

64 A

64 E

64 AB

326

WHAT PLATO SAID

Gorg. 495 B
Supra, p. 146

65 A

Supra, p. 318

especially require interpretation by flexible yet critical literary
considerations rather than by the rigid logic of an imputed
metaphysical system. It is not really possible to disprove con¬
clusively the belief that pleasure is the good. Otherwise it would
not still be affirmed as self-evident by many modern thinkers,
from Bentham to Herbert Spencer and his successors. All that
Plato could do was to exhibit the contradictions of normal hu¬
man experience and language that result from the crude and un¬
qualified affirmation of the thesis; to represent dramatically
Socrates as able to defeat and reduce to self-contradiction any
maintainer of the thesis; to satisfy the intensity of his own feel¬
ing on the subject by confirming Socrates' victory in argument
with plausible supplementary analogies, and finally to crown
the whole with moral and religious eloquence. That is what he
actually does in the Gorgias , the Philebus , and, less directly, in
the Republic and the Laws; and there is every reason to suppose
that he knew what he was doing and recognized the limits of
mere argument in this matter.

The Philebus does not attempt to define the good which the
Republic pronounced to be undefinable, nor does it undertake to
prove directly that intelligence in itself is the good. If we can¬
not hunt it down with one idea, Plato says, we may apprehend
it by three: beauty, symmetry, and truth. The conclusion of
the long and indirect argument is that intelligence is more near¬
ly akin to the good than pleasure as such. The chief value of
this argument, it may be thought, resides rather in the ethical
and psychological analyses that lead to the conclusion than in
the conclusion itself. However that may be, the final formula¬
tion of the argument is that the good, or, at any rate, the good
life, is a mixture of pleasure and intelligence, since their com¬
plete separation not only would be acceptable to nobody but is
a psychological impossibility. The value of a mixture, the argu¬
ment continues, is determined not so much by its contents as by
the rightness of the principles and proportions by which they are
mixed. Intelligence is, it is true, an element of the mixture, but
it is also closely akin to the principles that make the mixture
right and acceptable, which pleasure obviously is not. The sec¬
ond prize, then, in the figure that runs through the entire dia¬
logue falls to intelligence and not to pleasure. This is the essen-

PHILEBUS

3*7

tial argument, stripped of the imagery which clothes it. But
Plato, as we have seen, likes to confirm by further analogies con¬
clusions that deeply enlist his feelings.

The dividing line between the argument and the confirma¬
tions is not so clearly marked in the Philebus as it is in many
other cases. But the last few pages of the dialogue, though
they repeat and sum up the argument, belong mainly to what
we have described as supplementary confirmations. That is the
main meaning of the list or scale of five or six gradations of the
good. Plato is fond of such scales or lists and uses them some¬
times satirically and sometimes as the more serious expression
of his own preferences and sense of values. The main purpose
of the scale in. the Philebus is to satisfy Plato’s feelings by re¬
moving pleasure as such to the fifth or sixth place from the near¬
est expressible approximation to the transcendent and inde¬
finable good. The scale may suggest other metaphysical mean¬
ings, but they are not to be pressed or taken too seriously or
erected into a system. There is no real obscurity in the passage
except in the doubtful text of one word which need not appreci¬
ably affect the sense. The purpose that we have attributed to
Plato is quite plain, and the allegory or symbolism is perfectly
transparent. The pure principle of measure is put first because
the Platonic idea itself is a kind of measure or definitive form
that shapes and limits the indeterminate matter of things. The
principle of symmetry and its synonyms is distinguished from
measure and placed second partly to indicate what has already
been explicitly said, that we are compelled to apprehend the
good largely through beauty, and also because this adds another
item to the list that depresses pleasure to the sixth place. Nous
as such comes next to supply a third item and also because the
Philebus has already distinguished our finite human intelligence
from the mind in the universe to which it is akin or of which it
is in a sense a part. Human intelligence, including opinions, is
the fourth item, since, though in theory we are contemplating
universal as well as human good, the ethical problem is the good
for man, the good life. The fifth place is thus assigned to the
purer and harmless pleasures and the sixth by means of a quo¬
tation of an Orphic line, which may have possibly suggested the
entire scheme, to the pleasures for which Philebus claimed the

On Phaedo 78 B

Phaedo 81 E-82 A
Phaedr. 248-49
Tim. 42 A-D, 91
Dff.

66 A 8

Supra, p. 3x7

66 C 8

328

WHAT PLATO SAID

first place. Incidentally it may be noticed that both the method
and the style of this hierarchy of precedence and dignity, and
much in the content, are replete with suggestions for Neoplato¬
nism.

The conclusion displeases Grote and all hard-headed critics
who deprecate the “contamination” of “scientific ethics” with
edification. Pleasure is fifth in the scale. “It is not first, even
Rep,6578B 2 though all beasts and cattle affirm it by their pursuit of what
Prot!^ cd delights them. In these the multitude put their faith as augurs
in birds and so deem the loves of the animals surer testimonies
than the divinations and the reasonings of the philosophic
muse.”

TIMAEUS

The Timaeus is sometimes said to be one of the most arid
and obscure of the Platonic dialogues. It is certainly one of the
richest in thought and most heavily freighted in matter; yet
there is no dialogue which requires for its full comprehension
more consideration of the author’s design and the literary art
by which he realized it. We cannot understand it at all unless
we perceive that Plato’s purpose is to present a swift and preg¬
nant summary of what he knows to be the imperfect science of
his day from the point of view of that teleological interpretation
of nature which Socrates desiderated in the Phaedo but could
not find in the philosophy of Anaxagoras or discover for him¬
self.

The reader, if a man of science, may or may not be in sym¬
pathy with the literary art and the devices of style that system¬
atically throughout give purpose precedence over mechanism
or necessity. An apologist might plead that in spite of, perhaps
because of, this deliberately imposed unity of tone Plato has
packed more matter into these few pages than the seemingly
more sober science of Aristotle ever compressed into the same
space. But however that may be, unless the critic perceives
that the Timaeus is in large measure a conscious tour de force
of style, he will not do justice to Plato’s meanings.

Plato undoubtedly intends seriously the central thought that
the universe somehow is a product and revelation of intelligent
design and beneficent purpose. And if that is superstition, he
is, like some of the greatest modern men of science, supersti¬
tious. But he never uses this faith in what he deems the primary
causes to disparage scientific study of the secondary, instru¬
mental, mechanical causes, and he rarely if ever falls into the
trivialities of the Xenophontic and Bridgewater treatise style of
argument from design. What hasty, hostile, and uncritical read¬
ers mistake for that is only the rhetoric and literary art em¬
ployed to give consistent coloring and unity of tone to his prose
poem as a whole. The distinction may seem subtle, but it is

329

99 CD

Phaedo 96-99
AJP, IX, 406

Xen. Mem. I. 4. 6

33°

WHAT PLATO SAID

sound and indispensable for the understanding of the thought
of what is in some respects Plato’s masterpiece.

Like the Parmenides , the Timaeus falls into two distinct un¬
equal and quite different parts — a readable introductory dia¬
logue which constitutes about one-seventh (in the Parmenides
one-fourth) of the whole, and a didactic technical exposition
which in the Parmenides takes the form of a metaphysical di¬
alectic with an assenting respondent and in the Timaeus of a
supra, P. 287 continuous speech or treatise de rerum natura . The more tech¬
nical details of this treatise have been and will be studied else¬
where.

The Introduction, by an afterthought, represents the Timaeus
as the second member of a trilogy, or perhaps tetralogy, of
17 a which the Republic would be the first. Socrates meets by ap-
charm. 153 c pointment Timaeus of Locri, of whom nothing is known, Cri-
tias, Hermocrates, who may or may not be intended for the
4725ff.;68.38s 6‘ Syracusan statesman known from Thucydides, and an unknown
fourth person who may or may not be Plato himself. They are
17 a 2 supposed to have been silent hearers of the Republic “yester-
on Lysis 2hIcd day,” and are to entertain Socrates today by a feast of reason
of their own providing. Socrates, in explanation of his wishes
in the matter, begins with a brief summary, not of the Republic
as a whole, but of the outstanding features of his ideal state
on charm. 161 e depicted there — the division of labor and of classes, the special
ayx|* education of the military class, their simple communistic life,
Rep. 415 D-417 b and the peculiar and memorable provisions for marriage and the
Rep. 457 Dff! generation of children. The sequel and the Critias will show
17C-1 b t^at these are the chief points relevant to Plato’s present pur-
°n Raolb) C Pose- The resume occupies only two pages, and it is quite idle
to ask why Plato did not insert an accurate analysis of the Re -
Fnediander^ii, pubHc here, or to conjecture that he may be referring to an
Ritter, I, 216-17 earlier edition or to some lost work.

Socrates goes on to say that what he wishes is to see the
19 c citizens of this state in action — to observe their deeds and
their speeches in some war worthy of them. But who are
19 d competent to treat worthily so great a theme? Poets can imi-
oJphlldo1^ e tate only what they have experienced. It is even harder to
imitate in word than it is in act what is not thus known. The
Prot. 3xs ab Sophists, who wander from city to city, have no experience of

TIMAEUS

33 1

statesmen who are also philosophers. There remain only men
of broad culture, experience, and scientific imagination like
Timaeus and Hermocrates. To them Socrates appeals.

Hermocrates replies that a suggestion made by Critias yester¬
day when they were walking back to the lodging where he en¬
tertains them will supply them with a theme. Critias explains.
The theme is a story which, as a boy of ten, when he and his
companions were reciting the poems of Solon — which were then
new — and other poets at the Apatouria, he eagerly heard from
his ninety-year-old grandfather and namesake, who had heard
it from Solon or perhaps from his own father, Dropides, who,
as Solon’s poems testify, was his friend and kinsman.

On his visit to Egypt, Solon entered into conversation with
the priests of Sais, a town of the Delta, very friendly to the
Athenians. To lure the priests into discussion of Egyptian an¬
tiquities Solon began to talk to them about the early legends of
Greece, whereupon an elder priest exclaimed, “O Solon, Solon,
you Greeks are eternal children, .... you are always youthful
in your souls, for you have in them no thoughts made venerable
by old-time tradition, nor any science hoary with age. The
reason of this is the conflagrations and floods symbolized by
your myths of Phaethon and the like. These cataclysms periodi¬
cally wipe out your civilization and leave only a few unlettered
shepherds on the mountains, to begin the cycle anew. From
such destruction the Nile preserves us, and our records are
therefore the oldest, and take note of all noteworthy ‘differ¬
ences.’ The race of man is eternal, and our temples are the
guardians of its history. It is thus that we have preserved the
tradition of the most lawful government and glorious deeds of
your Athens before the last great flood, nine thousand years
ago, which you have forgotten.”

At Solon’s request the priest recalls the tale, and, compli¬
menting Athens as the land chosen by the goddess, the land
whose soil and climate naturally produced the most intelligent
men, dwells on the friendship of Sais for Athens and the re¬
semblance between the institutions of Egypt and of that older
Athens. The tale is the famous story of Atlantis, an island in
the western sea, larger than Libya and Asia combined, whose
empire extended also to Egypt and Tyrrhenia. With this bar-

Euthyd. 305 DE,
306 BC

On Theaet. 193 B
20 A

20 CD

On Prot. 311 A
20 DE ff.

21 B

Supra, p. 1

20 E 2

At. Rhet. 1375 b
32

21 E

Herod. II. 28
Plut. De Is. 9
Aristoph. Ach. 142

22 A
22 B

22 B 8

Eurip. El. 701
22 C

Laws 677 A
Polit. 270 CD

22 D

23 A

Laws, 676, 782

22 D

At. Met. 980 a 27
Polit. 272 C 4
Law 781 E, At.
Pol. 1329 b 28
(Newman)

23 A

23 c
23 E

Infra, pp. 350 ff.

24 E

332

WHAT PLATO SAID

2SBC
Menex. 242 E 2

Laws 698-99

25 D

26 AB

26 B

Parmen. 1 26 C

26 CD

Laws 684 A

27 A
27 A 4
Cf. 90 E 2
On Lysis 214 B
Class. Phil., VII,
248

28 A
Rep. 507 C 7
Cf. infra, p. 338
AJP, IX, 297-98
30 A
28 B, 29 B
On Euthyph. 6 E
53 B 4

37 A
35 B

AJP, X, 54
Taylor, Tim., pp.
146-47 „
34 8C
36 E, 40 A

38 C

39 AB
37 D
37 E

On Phileb. 16 A
38 B

On Laws 701 CD
Cf. 87 B 9

barian power ancient Athens, as leader of the Greeks, waged
a glorious war in defense of Europe, which it liberated even to
the pillars of Hercules. Then in one wild day and night the
warriors of Athens were swallowed up by the earth, and Atlantis
sank in the sea, leaving no trace but the shallow muddy bottom
which makes the western ocean impassable.

Critias has thought this story over in the night, and so vivid
are the memories of what we learn in childhood that all the
details are present to his mind. He is prepared to use the tale
to gratify Socrates’ wish. They will assume — it is a plausible
assumption — that those ancient Athenians are the citizens of
Socrates’ ideal state living under the institutions described
“yesterday.” This will give them a real historical basis for their
picture of the ideal state in action. But before Critias takes up
the tale, Timaeus, who is the scientific member of the com¬
pany, will tell the story of creation and nature down to the
birth of man.

The remaining five-sixths of the piece is Timaeus’ or rather
Plato’s discourse on creative evolution, his pre-Socratic prose
poem, his hymn of the universe, his anticipatory defiance of
the negative voice of Lucretius’ De rerum natura , his Bruno’s
Dell’ infinito universo e dei mondi , his Schelling’s Bruno, his Poe’s
Eureka, his Jean’s The Mysterious Universe.

A demiurgus or supreme artisan does not precisely create the
universe out of nothing but reduces a vaguely visioned pre¬
existent chaos to a cosmos by the use of the eternal ideas as his
models or patterns. On the principle that like is known by like
he creates a soul of the universe out of certain categories of the
Platonic logic, psychology, or metaphysics, and the harmonic
ratios of the Greek musical scales, and places it in the body of
the world, or rather the body of the world in it, for the regula¬
tion throughout all time of the movements of the sun, moon,
planets, and stars, and the courses of time, which is the moving
image of eternity. For days and nights and months and years
came into being together with the heavens and are portions of
time. Was, is, and will be are forms of time which in the con¬
fusion of our thought we transfer to the eternal essence which
is only from everlasting unto everlasting. But the more curious
consideration of this topic belongs to another subject.

TIMAEUS

333

Such is the framework, the mold into which Plato pours his
accumulation of facts, ideas, and fancies. It is obviously myth,
allegory, or symbol — the precise synonym does not matter.

Timaeus first at Socrates’ suggestion invokes the gods, with 27 bc
Herodotean or Platonic unction, that his words may not be dis- Phaedr. 273 e 7
pleasing to them.

We must begin by distinguishing the world of unchangeable 27 e
being known only by thought from the world of becoming, ap- 28 a
prehended by opinion and sense perception. The thing that an Rep. 546 b i
artisan models on an eternal pattern is fine and beautiful. If he 28 ab
makes use of a generated pattern it is not. The universe, the 28 b
heaven, or whatever designation pleases it best is a generated on cratyi. 400 e
thing known by opinion and sense. It must have had a cause. 28 c
To discover the maker and father of this all is difficult, and,
having found him, to declare him to all mankind impossible.

But we may ask which pattern he used. Even to say that the 29 ab
world is not beautiful would be impious. It is the fairest of all Laws 898 c 6
births and its artisan the best of causes. He must have used an
eternal model. The world, then, is a likeness, and since all dis- 29 b
course is like its subject matter, all speech about this visible
world is only a likely and probable tale. As genesis is to essence, On Phaedo 107-8
belief is to truth. We cannot expect exactitude or certainty. 29 cd
But if our tale is not less probable and consistent than the many
accounts given by others, I, the speaker, and you, the hearers,
being mortals, must be content.

Socrates is pleased with this proemium and Timaeus pro- on Laws 718 cd
ceeds. What cause moved its architect to form this world of 29 e
generation? He is good. And goodness grudges nothing. He on phaedr. 247 a
wished the world to be as like himself as possible and so he re-
duced the disorderly motions of chaos to order because order is
best. He gave the world a mind because intelligent things are 30 b

, ^ 1 • 11- j 11 • j & • Cic.Nat.deor.il.

better than unintelligent, and a soul because mind cannot exist pj8; m. 9 c
apart from soul and life. The world, then, being a living thing, Parmen. 132 b
must be patterned on lire and not on any particular living thing 30 c
or class of living things, but on the universal idea of the living cf. 37 d
thing or zdon , for it was to contain all visible living things as uSyfp^Jn.'as^
that all their ideas. As that is one, because if there were a sec- 30d
ond there would have to be a third as their model, so this world onP^men^L^

334

WHAT PLATO SAID

in the likeness of its divine idea is and always will be the one
55 cd, pic and only begotten heaven.

31 b 5 The material universe, then, was composed of fire and earth
soph. 247^03 *n orcjer to ke visibie ancj tangible, and of the two other ele-

32 ab ments required to establish a unifying proportion with these.

33 a It comprehends all of this matter in order that, being unaffected
0n Rep(Loe3b? 3 by harmful impingements from without, it may be perfect, im-

33 D 2' 68 1 3 mune from disease and old age, solitary, sufficient unto itself,
Quintii. i. io. 40 its own companion, a blessed god. Its sphericity corresponds
Clc‘ Lio;diiori with the comprehensiveness of its model idea. It needed no eyes
or other organs, for there was nothing outside to see or hear,
Soph.3265 E and there was no air to be breathed. By art and design it is so
constructed as to be nourished by its own waste. It would have
cf. 43 b been vain to give it hands and feet, for its motion is that which
40 a answers to its shape, and is akin to the movement of thought

34 a revolving upon itself.

cf c 34 AB ^uch was the reasoning of the eternal God concerning the god
N.H.ii.Ri-^y that was to be. As a living thing it has a soul composed most
Cf. supra, p. 332 mysteriously of categories of thought and ratios of harmony.

The entire composition of soul was apportioned to two circles,
the outer circle of the same and the inner circle of the other,
36 b s which were made to cross each other like the letter X. The un-*
36 c divided movement of the outer circle controlled and carried
with it to the right the contrary movements of the inner circle,
°f whose seven divisions three moved with equal, four with un-
40 bc equal, speed. The details of the apparently irregular movements
Laws 821-22 in which they overtake and are overtaken by one another and
40 d twist their orbits into spirals could not be explained without an
Epm. 978 d orrery or a planetarium. To reveal them to man and so teach
39 b him number, God kindled a light in the second orbit from the
earth. Thus men take note of night and day and months and
years, but they do not perceive that the movements of the
planets are also time. But we might apprehend that the perfect
39 l> year is completed when, measured by the revolution of the same,
they all come back to the starting-point.

34 bc 7 he mind and soul of the world were created not as our ran-
38 b dom human speech describes them here, but before the body
supra, p. 332 which they were to rule. And when the body was framed within
0nPhaedr.245Cp it, the soul, turning upon itself, became the first principle of

TIMAEUS

335

life and thought that shall not cease while time endures. And
these silent motions of the same and the other in contact with
the divided and the undivided throughout the universe report
to all the soul identities and differences which, when they relate
to the objects of sense, are true opinions, and when to the ob¬
jects of reason, are intelligence and science; and these, is the
defiant conclusion, surely can exist nowhere but in a soul.

And the father, contemplating this created image (glory and
delight) of the eternal gods, saw that it was in accordance with
his mind, and was well pleased. He could not make it eternal,
but he purposed to make it as far as possible still more like to
its pattern. In order that the universe may represent the idea
of living thing of which it is a copy, it was made to contain the
four types of living things corresponding to the four elements
and inherent in that idea, namely, heavenly bodies, birds, fishes,
and land animals. First of these are the fixed stars and the
divine heavenly bodies composed mostly of the element of fire.
These the demiurgus placed in the circle of the best thought to
be a true decoration of the spangled heavens. He gave them
two motions, a forward movement determined by the revolution
of the same and a revolution upon themselves ever thinking
the same thoughts about the same. Of the “planets” we have
already spoken. The choric dances of the stars, their opposi¬
tions and conjunctions and progressions, are taken for portents
by those who cannot reckon. Earth, our nurse, packed closely
about the axis of the universe, he made guardian of night and
day, first and eldest of the divinities within the heavens.

These are the visible gods. The list and the genealogy of the
invisible Hesiodic and conventional gods we must take on faith
from the testimony of the ancient heroes, their descendants.
The law accepts the testimony of relatives in family matters.

And after the birth of the visible gods and of those who show
themselves when it is their good pleasure to do so, the demiur¬
gus in a stately speech tells the created gods that since they
had a beginning they are not inherently immortal but that his
will shall preserve them from dissolution. He will now create
the immortal part of the souls of men, and depute to the created
gods the fashioning of their bodies, which will return to whence
they came, and of the mortal soul of sense and passion.

37 ab

Soph. 253 CD, 43
E f.; Theaet.
194 B 3
37 C

Rep. 571 C (Loeb)
Cf. 46 D

37 C

36 D 8

Gen. 1:31

Cf. on 41 B, p.332

37 D

Phileb. 16 D 2

39 E

40 A

Rep. 529 C (Loeb)
40 AB

On Gorg. 482 AB
40 B 7

40 D 1
AJP, X, 58

40 BC

40 D

Laws 931 A
Phaedr. 246 C
Crit. 107 AB
Epin. 980 C ff.

41 A-D

41 B
32 C

43 A

42 A
42 E ff.
69 CD

WHAT PLATO SAID

41 D

Rep. 621 B (Loeb)
AJP, X, 5Q
41 E

On Phaedo 113 D

43 A s

Rep. 61 1 D
42 B

On Phaedr. 248
DE

Infra, 90 E
42 C

On Laws 904 CD
On Rep. 617 E
(Loeb)

42 DE
Phaedo 83 E 1
Prot. 322 A
Laws 902 B 5

42 E

Cf. 69 C

On 41 D
43 A

Cf. 64 B 5, 67
Phileb. 33 E
43 T
Rep. 405 <

43 E-44 A
44 AB
Polit. 273 A

41 E
44 DE
On Phaedo 113 D

44 B

Rep. 535

Laws 63 4*1. 2
Rep. 534 D 1

45 AB
Theaet. 184 D

46 C 2
46 C 7
Laws 897 B 1

336

Out of the left-over materials of the world-soul he forms souls
equal in number to the stars. From the vehicle of its own star
each soul surveys the universe and receives the creator’s warn¬
ing of the tests it will undergo in its inevitable incorporation
into a mortal body subject to influx and efflux. When its reason
has dominated the turmoils of sense and the promptings of
passion and purged it of earthy and mortal accretions, it will
return to its pristine state and star. Until then its transmigra¬
tions will depress or elevate it in the scale of being according as
it rises or sinks in the scale of moral worth. They are warned,
and he will be blameless of their self-incurred ills.

So speaking, he sowed them among the planetary organs of
time, to be the most pious of animals, man, and himself abided
in his own place. His children, the created gods, receiving from
him the immortal principle of a mortal animal, took up their
tasks in imitation of their father, and borrowing from the world
the matter that would be restored to it, they fashioned the body
of man of the four elements whose disorderly movements and
the sensations that come from them penetrate to the soul,
dislocate the harmonic intervals of the circles, confuse the ap¬
prehensions of the same and the other, and confound the reason
of every soul when first it is enchained in a mortal body.

This body the gods framed with reference to the purposes
and the protection of life. That the round head might not come
to grief tumbling about the hollows and elevations of the earth,
they gave it for vehicle an elongated body provided with ex¬
tensible and flexible limbs. When the stream of nourishment
and growth dwindles the soul attains calm, the circles recover
their proper movement and take note of the same and the other
correctly. And if a sound education co-operates, the man be¬
comes normal and sane. If he is careless, he lives a lame life,
and returns unbettered and senseless to Hades.

The purposes of our makers are especially apparent in the
instruments which they created for all the foresights of the
mind — the organs of sense, and chief among these the light¬
bearing eyes. The physical details of their structure and func¬
tion, the causes of sleep and dreams and of the reversal of right
and left in the mirror which Timaeus describes are, he says, the
secondary or “necessary” causes which the gods made use of as

TIMAEUS

337

helpers in furtherance of their main designs. The primary cause
or reason is that if men had never seen the sun and moon and
the regular movements of the heavenly bodies, they never could
have formed the conception of number or of time, or been
aroused to those speculations about the nature of the universe
which have given birth to philosophy, the greatest gift of God
to man. Why harp upon the lesser gifts of sight, the loss of
which one who lacked philosophy if stricken blind would idly
deplore? Similarly, the true purpose of hearing and speech
(; logos ) is to lead men to philosophy, and the right use of musical
sound is to calm and harmonize the disorderly movements of
the soul. What enters the mouth subserves necessity, but the
stream of speech that issues from it is the servant of the mind.
The harmony of high and low notes yields pleasure to the
senseless but joy to the sensible.

So far we have spoken mainly of design and the final causes,
but the transition to physics and physiology compels us to rec¬
ognize the secondary causes which God uses to realize the idea
of the best, but which the multitude mistakes for the first. For
this universe is, after all, a composite structure, a compromise
resulting from a conflict of beneficent purpose with recalcitrant
necessity. The four “elements,” which are not even syllables,
and their transformations have never been explained. We shall
not attempt to go back to the absolute beginning or beginnings
by our present methods. But our guesses may come a little
nearer to first principles than our predecessors' did.

For the study of design we needed only the assumption of
two principles, the idea and the copy. We must now add as the
receptacle and mother or nurse of all generation that mystic
and baffling notion of the space, place, or neutral colorless me¬
dium in which all material transformations take place, and into
which in some incomprehensible fashion the eternal ideas and
qualities of things enter and impress themselves. These fleeting
transformations of the elements elude the fixities of language
and thought. We must never say that this thing is fire or fire this
thing, but only that such or such a quality, appearing now here,
now there, is fire or white, as the case may be.

The only abiding thing is the receptacle, which never departs
from its own nature. It must in itself possess none of the quali-

47 A

47 AB

Rep.527E2(Locb)
47 B

47 CD
67 BC
80 AB

75 E

Matt. 15:17-18
Mark 7:18 f.

80 B 6-7

47 E

46 CD

On Phaedo 99 A 2

47 E-48 A

AJP, IX, 295

48 C 1

Theaet. 205 C 2
48 B

Phaedr. 247 C
48 C

On Phileb. 58 D
Rep. 435 CD
40 B
48 D

Class.Phil., XXIII,
70

48 E

49 A-51 A

51 A 5

52 D 4
50 C

50 E

51 B

50 C

49-50

Cratyl. 439 D

AJP, X, 63-64

49 E

50 C 1

Cratyl. 439 E 5
Rep. 380 D 8

338

WHAT PLATO SAID

So E

So C
51 AB
53 Cf.

56 B
51 BC

A JP, X, 65
On Polit. 284 D
Si D

37 B

51 E

Gorg. 454 E-455 A
37 B
Meno 98 AB

52 A

On Phaedo 78 E

52 B

52 B

Laws 904 D 3
Phacdr. 247 D 8
AJP, X, 67-68

52 CD

Symp. 21 1 A
AJP, X, 68
53 C

48 B

Supra, p. 285
On Phaedr. 247 C

53 B 4
53-57
49 B 8

54 B 8

52 E 6-7

53 A

53 B 2

ties which it receives but be as neutral as the base which artists
use in preparing perfumes. How the ideas or qualities enter into
this receptacle is a mystery of which we shall speak later.

But is there an idea of fire? Are these ideas real? Or is all we
say of them mere words? Yes, we still affirm the reality of these
eternal ideas, which is as certain as the distinction between pure
intelligence and right opinion. Distinct they surely are. The
one is produced by teaching, the other by persuasion. The one
is unalterable, the other subject to change. All men have opin¬
ions but only a few intelligence. Our philosophy must take ac¬
count of three things, then: the idea, its namesake and sensible
copy, and the eternal reality of place that provides an abode
for all generation and is itself apprehensible from its very in¬
apprehensibility by a bastard reasoning in which we can hardly
put our faith. It is on this that we fix our thought as in a waking
dream when we affirm that everything must be somewhere and
that what is nowhere is nothing. That commonplace is true
only of the image which is the fleeting phantasm of something
else and as an adumbration has to borrow its very existence
from its medium. But the sleepless and true reality exists in
itself and not as one thing in another.

To return to the elements. We can express all that is true in
materialistic (Democritean?) atomism and all that is known to
the science of our day, and yet preserve our own principle of
order and design and beauty by assuming the four elements to
be shaped in the receptacle of generation by the four regular
solids (recently discovered) which in turn may be constructed
of two types of triangles. This hypothesis will account as well
as can be expected for all the known transformations of matter.

We speak of earth, air, water, and fire as “elements” or let¬
ters, whereas they are not even syllables. No one has explained
their origin, and, as already said, we shall not attempt an ulti¬
mate explanation for which our present method is insufficient.
We seek only the most plausible account of God’s reduction of
chaos to order by the use of numbers and forms, and of the
transformations of matter, which we seem to witness. The dis¬
ordered movements of chaos, like a winnowing fan, sifted the
seeds of things and forced like into contact with like. Traces
of the elements existed in the absence of God and before he

TIMAEUS

339

introduced order and measure. Our principles postulate that he 53 b 5
did this in the best and fairest possible way. If anyone can
show a better, we willingly concede him the prize. But our as- 54 ab
sumption is that the elements, being solids, were constructed 53 cd
from the planes and triangles that generate solids. There are
two typical triangles, the right-angled isosceles triangle, four of 53-54
which form a square, and twenty-four or six squares a cube, ssc
which we will call the element of earth. The triangle consti- 55 d
tutive of the other three elements is that scalene which is half of
an equilateral triangle and whose hypotenuse is double the lesser
side. Six such scalene triangles juxtaposed, two and two by
their lesser sides so that the extremes of the lesser sides and the
hypotenuses meet in a point, form an equilateral triangle, and
four of the last or twenty-four of the elementary triangles shape
the pyramid which as the first, smallest, and sharpest of solids ssa-cb.
we assign to fire. Similarly, the combination of eight or forty- 56 ab
eight yields the octohedron for air and of twenty or one hundred
and twenty the icosahedron for water. A fifth combination (the ssc
dodecahedron) God used to adorn the universe. The transfer- 56-57
mations that we witness are due to the breaking-up and recon¬
stitution of these forms in their conflicts with one another and
under the pressure of the revolution of the universe. Earth 58 b
when divided can only recombine as earth, for its triangles are 56 d
disparate from those of the other elements. The twenty faces of s6D
water yield two parts of air (16) and one of fire (4), and in the
same manner all other possible dissolutions and recombinations 56E-57AB
may be plausibly explained. Modern science now tries to evade
the stagnation which it calls “entropy” by the action of “cosmic
rays.” The mechanical principles on which Plato relies to per¬
petuate the processes of change are the revolution of the uni- 58
verse, which, there being no vacuum, compresses the elements faci
into collision; the inequalities of the elements, whereby the 59A,79Bi,79Ci
smaller penetrate the interstices of the larger and the larger
crush the smaller; the tendency of every element to seek its own
place, whereby, e.g., the fire that may result from the decompo- |®cC
sition of air or water rises, and the water that is formed from the 53 a
breaking-up of air sinks. Hence the perpetuation of the genesis Pliaedr. 245 E 1
of non-uniformity and motion which prevents the four elements 58 a 3
from segregating each in its own heap, or, since Plato is obvious-

34°

WHAT PLATO SAID

ly thinking of Empedocles, we may add, blending indistinguish-
ably in a sphaeros , either of which conditions in the Empedo-
clean cycle requires fate or supernatural intervention to start
the world anew.

80C3 The fact that Plato admits no actio in distans compels him to
conceive all “necessary” causation as push, thrust, and pressure.
Thus, e.g., primary respiration begins with the outrush of the

79 d warmed breath seeking its like or its own place. There are two
79 c 3 exits. The air that issues from the mouth or the pores of the

79 c 6 body pushes the external air around to one or the other of these
79E10 entrances and so the process continues. Similar explanations,

80 a we are told, must be found for cupping, deglutition, the move¬

ments of projectiles, the magnet and musical harmonies result-

80 ab ing from the overtaking of slow movements by swift.

The matter-of-fact objections of Aristotle and others to
Plato’s physics and his theory of matter will be examined else¬
where. Plato expressly says that it is only a plausible tale, but
that it is quite as rational as and much neater than the atomic
theory (of Democritus?). It is. And it is also much nearer to
the latest guesses of science. Plato of course was aware that a
combination of triangles and surfaces is not in itself a solid
56B5 pyramid or the sensuous quality of fire. It has to be solidified,
jociii,* 35711** and in some inexplicable way “made fiery” by the “presence”
61 c 6 of the idea of fire, and sensation has to be preassumed. But
6s77E what is “solidity” in the physics of today? And how do we ex¬
plain the transformation of nervous “shocks” into sensation and
consciousness?

The remainder of the Timaeus is, with the exception of a few
eloquent or witty passages, technical detail — a rapid survey of
what in modern parlance would be called physics, chemistry,
meteorology, physiology, and medicine.

The details may be found in the works referred to in the Bibli¬
ography, especially Zeller, pages 769 ff., 789 ff., and the com¬
mentaries of Martin, Stallbaum, Archer-Hind, and Taylor. A
bare enumeration suffices here. First come the “kinds” of mat¬
ter (58-61), fire and air with their species flame, smoke, mist;
the “kinds” of water (58 D), as, e.g., metals that melt and flow
and cool (58 E) and in particular gold, adamant, bronze, and

TIMAEUS

34i

rust (59 AB), hail, ice, and snow (59 E), the saps, oils, pitch, and
wine which heats the soul together with the body (60 A 5); the
“kinds” of earth (60 B), rocks, earthenware, lye, and salt by the
word of the law dear to heaven; and mixed “kinds,” as, e.g.,
glass. Then come the qualities of matter. These presuppose
sensation which we assume and postpone. The chief are heat
and cold, hard and soft (relative terms), weight which involves
an explanation of the relative terms up and down , smooth and
rough, and, most important of all, common sensations, pain and
pleasure, which, broadly speaking, are affections that do vio¬
lence to or restore the natural state of the body with a motion
that is sufficiently sudden and intense to penetrate to conscious¬
ness.

After common sensations come the specific sensations of
tastes, smells, which have no fixed species and can be classified
only as pleasant and unpleasant; sounds, and colors. Then after
the poetic episode of the postponed creation of the mortal soul,
we pass to what may be called “physiology”: the circulation of
the blood, the localization of the three parts of the soul in the
body and thereto of the liver, the spleen, the heart, the viscera
(72 E), the bones (73 B ff.), the flesh (74 C ff.), the hair (75 E
ff.), the muscles (74 B, 75 CD), and the head, seat of the sov¬
ereign reason.

Plants, we are told, were created for the sake of man. They
live and feel but have no consciousness. A complicated descrip¬
tion is given of the purposes and mechanism of respiration and
the incidental employment of some of its mechanical principles
in the explanation of cupping and the magnet and of pitch and
harmony in music. The remaining topics are the nature and
treatment of diseases, the four humors, some moral reflections
on these themes, generation, metempsychosis, and reversed evo¬
lution. Diseases of the body are classified as affecting (1) the
four primary elements; (2) the tissues and structures derived
from them, marrow, bone, flesh, blood, and the humors; and a
third class due to air, phlegm, and bile. As in the Laws and vir¬
tually in the Symposium , disease is generalized as 7r Aeo^e^a, the
unnatural overreaching or excess of one element in relation to
another. The severest diseases are those due to a reversal of
the natural order of growth and development, as, e.g., when

60 E

61 BC

61 c

61 DE

62 B

62 C, 63 E
64 A

65-66

66 D

67 B

67 C ff., 68
69 Aff.

69-70
69 E ff.

87 A 3-4
89 E 4

71 A ff., 72 C

75 B ff., 76 C
90 A
77 AB

76-77

79 ff-

81-82 ff.
83

89-90, 91
82 AB
82 C ff.

84 CD

Symp. 188 AB, 186
Laws 906 C

82 A

82 C

WHAT PLATO SAID

82 E
84 B

86 B

Soph. 227E-228 A
Phileb. 63 D, 45
DE

86 CD

87 B

Cf. 38 B 4-5

88 B

Sallust Cat. 8
Laws 789 D, 791 A
Symp. 189 A

89 B

89 C

Rep. 406-7 (Loeb)

70 B 1-2
Rabelais, III, 4
83 E

342

flesh is resolved back into blood instead of being produced from
it. When a mixture of phlegm and black bile spreads to and per¬
turbs the revolutions in the head, this disease of the most sacred
part of the body is most fittingly called the “sacred disease.”

The disease of the soul is folly of which there are two kinds,
madness and ignorance. Intense pleasure and pain are diseases
that blind the intelligence. Sexual incontinence is a disease due
to porosity of bones and overabundance of seed, and, like most
other forms of incontinence, is mistakenly supposed to be volun¬
tary. Most diseases of the soul, in fact, have their source in an
evil condition of the humors of the body, and since they are not
healed but rather fostered by bad governments and mistaken
education, parents are more to blame for the results than chil¬
dren, educators than their alumni. That is another story. But
we should all, so far as may be, pursue the good and eschew the
evil.

The remedies of disease may be generalized as the preserva¬
tion or restoration of symmetry and balance, especially the
larger harmony of mind and body. The rule is not to exercise
the body without the soul or the soul without the body. Motion
or exercise is the chief preservative of health and corrective of
internal disorder — preferably self-motion, second, motion by
conveyance; third, and only as a last resort, purging by drugs.
For a disease is in a way itself an organism with a predetermined
course of life and the irritation of it by violent interference usu¬
ally does more harm than good. Dieting is better than drug¬
ging-

I he Middle Age found in the Timaeus the Trinity, the cross
of Christ, and the Holy Ghost (World-Soul). And with a little
good will a twentieth-century transcendental physicist can read
into it the latest Pythagorean identification of mathematics and
reality, the universality and relativity of motion, the illustra¬
tion of relativity by impossible experiments, the evolution of
the elements, the vista of elements beyond elements and atoms
within the atoms, the demand for physical explanations of
weight or gravity, not to speak of the circulation of the blood,
the nervous system, and the conception of disease as a living
entity, and the “laws of nature.”

TIMAEUS

343

A hostile and matter-of-fact criticism enumerates many ab¬
surdities which if taken literally as Plato's considered beliefs
seem to confirm the impression that he is, after all, a primitive
thinker of unscientific temper, whose interest for us is purely
historical.

Many critics have missed the irony of the statement that the
polished surface of the liver was designed by the gods for the
entertainment of the lower soul in sleep and its guidance by
images which, however, Plato dryly adds, must be interpreted
by men in full possession of their wakeful reason. The signs on
the liver, he warns the superstitious, are valid only in and for
the living. After death they are too obscure for precise interpre¬
tation. Other interpreters have missed or misapprehended the
humor of the reversed evolution: The gods, foreseeing that de¬
generation would evolve women and other animals from man,
thoughtfully provided man with rudimentary claws and hairs.
Birds, we are solemnly told, are descended from light-minded,
unphilosophic men who in their simplicity supposed that sight
supplied the most solid proofs about the things aloft.

No sensitive reader can fail to appreciate the high poetry of
the creation of the mortal soul by the inferior deities: And they,
imitating the Demiourgos> took over from him the immortal
principle of the soul, and round about it turned as a vehicle the
mortal body, and therein they constructed another type of soul
containing within itself dread but inevitable affections, pleasure,
the chief bait and lure of evil, pain that makes men flee from the
good, and thereto confidence and fear, a brace of foolish coun¬
selors, wrath that will not be assuaged, and hope that is easily
led astray. And commingling these with unreasoning sensa¬
tions and desire that attempts all things, they compounded by
ineluctable necessity the mortal spirit of man.

Swinburne, who is said to have corrected the proofs of Jow-
ett’s Plato , surely had this in mind when he wrote:

Before the beginning of years,

There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

71 1) ff.

72 B

76 E

91 D

Cf. Rep. 529 BC

69 Cff.

69 D

Prot. 354, C 4
Laws 875 BC
Phileb. 67 B 2

344

WHAT PLATO SAID

go A

On Symp. 202 E
AJP, X, 78
90 B

At. Eth. Nic. 1177
b 31-34

Symp. 212 A 7

59 CD

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,

And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;

And wrought with weeping and laughter
And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow
The holy spirit of man.

But the true soul, Plato admonishes us, is no earthly plant
rooted in appetite and ambition, but the reason, which God has
given each of us as his attendant daemon or guardian angel, and
which in token of its kinship with the divine has its place facing
heaven in the highest part of the body. The mortal soul must
of necessity think mortal thoughts. The soul that loves learning
and wisdom should think thoughts immortal and divine and so,
in the measure possible to man, become immortal itself.

Critics who find the Timaeus obscure also speak of the heavi¬
ness, the aridity, and monotony of its style. This, as already
pointed out, is a misapprehension of the problem which Plato
set himself, and a failure to appreciate the literary art that
found the appropriate style for its treatment. For the Timaeus ,
as we have said, is to be studied as a great scientific poem, a
hymn of the universe, rather than as a masterpiece of meta¬
physics. Though rich in thought, it is not “the focus to which
the rays of Plato’s thought converge”; it is not the “inmost
shrine of the edifice,” but rather, as Jowett well says, a “de¬
tached building in a different style.” We must not look to it for
revelations of the inner meanings of the Platonic philosophy.
It is merely the grandest of those literary digressions which
Plato allowed himself when he laid aside for a time the discus¬
sion of eternal realities (methods of abstract reasoning) and
enjoyed a relaxation that brought in its train no repentance, in
hunting the trail of plausible conjectures about the things of
generation. As in the Menexenus Plato re-writes the typical
Athenian funeral oration and charges it with moral meanings

TIMAEUS

345

of his own, so, to compare great things with small, the Timaens
is his treatise on “Nature or the All.” But, as he himself says,
all the greater arts require the stimulus of what the multitude
would regard as idle and airy prating about nature, and his
mind is more at ease amid the mighty movements of cosmic
agencies than in devising consolations for the average Athenian.

Besides the grandeur of his theme, Plato had, to quicken and
stimulate his genius here, a distinct sense of opposition to his
models. There is, after all, no very deep ethical or philosophic
contrast between the Menexenus and the Periclean or pseudo-
Lysian funeral orations. But in setting forth his general con¬
ception of the universe and man’s place therein, Plato was con¬
scious of a distinct and typical antithesis between himself and
the predecessors he sought to imitate or surpass. When men
have passed out from the mythologic stage in which they ask
not what is the cause of rain but “who rains,” there remain for
thinkers but two typical cosmogonies: (i) that which treats the
universe as a vast machine sufficiently explained when we have
ascertained the mechanical laws of its action; (2) that which
looks upon the cosmos as a living organism guided or informed
by a purpose that bears some intelligible relation to man’s ideas
of order, beauty, and right. The Timaeus is the earliest and
grandest statement of the teleological view outside of the Bible.
But, as Lange and Benn, after Bacon, have shown, the oppo¬
site or mechanical interpretation of the universe had been con¬
stantly gaining in Greek thought from the time of Thales. In
Empedocles it is but faintly disguised by the mythical garb.
Empedocles is essentially an esprit positif. As such he is com¬
mended by Renan and disparaged by Hegel. The nous of Anaxag¬
oras is hardly more of a spiritual force in physics than the God
of the discreet and mechanical Descartes. In Democritus, whose
influence is felt the more strongly throughout Plato that he is
never named, all disguises are thrown oflf. All other things exist
voficp, in reality (ererj) there exist only arojua nai Ktvov — “vanish¬
ing atom and void, atom and void into the unseen forever.”

This picture of a mechanical universe was displeasing to
Plato’s imagination. The dogmatism and assurance that has al¬
ways been held characteristic of materialists offended him.
And, above all, he had come to regard all forms of ethical skep-

Phaedr. 269 E 4

AJTP, IX, 402, n. 1

AJP, IX, 404, n. 4

346

WHAT PLATO SAID

Laws 891 C, 886
AB

Gorg. 482 E, 483
E; Rep. 344 C

Laws 890 A

AJP, IX, 405, n. 4
Laws 897 A
Epin. 988 C

Laws 888 E 5
Laws 889 E 1-2

AJP, IX, 406

I. 4. 8; IV. 3. 14

98 E ff .

ticism and cynicism as ultimately traceable to the doctrine of
the priority of matter over mind taught by these clever men.
It was, he believed, in the school that taught “that as art and
reason come from nature, nature cannot come from art and
reason” that Callicles and Thrasymachus learned to contrast
the grace of nature with the tyranny of human law, and thus to
set in harmful opposition two terms whose suggestions ought to
be blended in reason and the good. It was from hearing that
matter and its movements are prior to soul and its movements,
and that the gods exist by art and not by nature, that these
advanced thinkers had come to regard human legislation as an
art whose positions are not true, or true only as maintained by
power in the interests of selfishness. To refute this skepticism <
it is necessary to establish by argument, and maintain by con¬
sistent use of language, the priority everywhere of soul, art, de¬
sign, and intelligence, to matter, chance, and blind nature. In a
matter so essential to the welfare of society, the slightest show
of plausible proof must be welcomed, and here, if anywhere, the
lawgiver would be justified, as Emerson says of Plato, in “play¬
ing providence a little with the vulgar sort.”

1 he teleological view of nature, then, was not merely con¬
sonant with Plato’s intellectual beliefs and imaginative sympa¬
thies ( Pliaedo 97 E) — it was a fundamental ethical postulate of
the lawgiver, to be maintained at all costs. The mark of that
view is the explanation of the universe by means of the “high¬
er” rather than the “lower” elements in the constitution of man.
The simplest statement of this analogy, virtually identical with
that in Xenophon’s Memorabilia , is to be found in Socrates’
question in the Philebus (30 A) : Whence came the soul in our
bodies unless the body of the all has a soul? But to appreciate
its full moral significance in Plato, we must recall again the
passage of the Phaedo where Socrates, criticizing the philosophy
of Anaxagoras, and discriminating between causes and condi¬
tions, declares that the true cause of his presence in prison is his
own conviction of right, immortalized in the Crito , and not the
structure of his body or the physical force that holds him in his
narrow cell. The detailed application to the universe of this
view of causation, in antithesis to the prevailing mechanical
theories, is suggested but not attempted there. Plato always

TIMAEUS

347

felt that the mechanical explanation of the world as put forth
by the science of his time was vulnerable. He always recognized
that the teleological interpretation of things belonged rather
to the world of poetry and aspiration than to that of exact
thought, and for this reason his main intellectual effort was
spent in working out psychological and dialectic problems of
method with the noncommittal language of the theory of ideas.

But it was natural that he should make one attempt to fix in
words the vision of creation in which his imagination sought
refuge from the vortices of Democritus, and that attempt, owing
perhaps quite as much to the unique conditions of the time as
to the genius of the author, issued in a consummate literary
masterpiece. The brilliant guesses of the Ionian physicists sup¬
plied him with all the general conceptions that we have today,
while his imagination was not checked by the immense body of
verified fact of which modern science requires the constructive
philosopher to take account. It was still possible for a gifted
amateur to speak with plausibility if not with authority. He
could still argue with confidence that all attempts at a history
of creation were merely guesses at truth, and that his guesses
were quite as consistent as those of his opponents, and infinitely
more beautiful. The verified detail of science makes it impossi¬
ble for the modern controversialist to compose an alternative
picture to the universe of Haeckel or Spencer. And modern
chemistry and biology force him back upon subtler defenses
than the defiant assertion that he who attempts creative syn¬
thesis and analysis ignores the difference between man and God
{Tint. 68 D), or the humorous suggestion that nails and hair
were given to man in prevision of his degeneration into animals
needing claws and fur {ibid. 76 DE). The modern appeal to our
ignorance can only quote Hamlet’s “There are more things in
heaven and earth” and murmur with trustful hope “behind the
veil, behind the veil.” For these reasons, and on account of the
incomparable splendor and majesty of its diction, the Timaeus
will probably remain the finest statement of the teleological idea
in literature. That Grote should see in the Timaeus only a foil
to the superior brilliancy of the Republic , and that John Stuart
Mill should be repelled by “the fog of mystical Pythagoreanism
in which the noble light of philosophy in Plato was extin-

Origin of Syllog.,
P- 7

Cf. supra, p. 11

348

WHAT PLATO SAID

guished,” is natural. They had too little feeling for imaginative
style, and were too much preoccupied with modern polemics to
understand anything of Plato’s later work. And the Timaeus in
Grote’s summary hardly makes a better showing than in the
sapient resumes of La Harpe, Draper and Bain, Lewes, and the
too numerous histories of science that have innocently followed
them. But when eminent English scholars find in the Timaeus
“a labored march in the dialogue and a degree of confusion and
incompleteness in the general design,” one asks in amazement
whether they can ever have read the work aloud and felt the
swift, bounding rhythm of the pregnant sentences; whether they
have adequately considered the nature of the literary problem
involved in the attempt to condense into ninety pages a teleo¬
logical cosmogony and an enumeration of the chief results al¬
ready won by nascent Greek science. It is comparatively easy
to be at ease in lauding love to youthful enthusiasts, as in prais¬
ing the Athenians at Athens {Menex. 235 D); but to put soul,
life, movement, and organic unity into the enormous mass of
subtle thoughts and concrete details of the Timaeus required a
far different and not less noble “art of words.” The problem of
style in the Timaeus was not by lightness of touch and dramatic
vivacity to bring down a great theme to the intelligence of read¬
ers who had no part in the ways of discipline whereby such
things must be set forth {Tim. 53 C); but to lend unity, dignity,
and rhythm to what in other hands would have proved a mass
of jarring and discordant details. Unity, speed, moral unction,
and religious awe are the keys to the art as well as to the thought
Phiieb. 31 d of the Timaeus. To speak rapidly in brief compass of the great¬
est things is its motto. The swift, resonant periods flow on
through the strophe of design and the antistrophe of necessity,
to the epode of the glory of the cosmic God, almost with the
movement of a Pindaric ode. And if the unavoidable details of
the physical constitution of the elements and of animal anatomy
and pathology threaten sometimes to mar the stately harmony
of the whole, they yet serve, like Pindar’s enforced enumera¬
tions of the victor’s trials and triumphs, to give us a sense of
truth and fidelity to realities.

Unity and speed are attained by frequent rapid anticipations
and parallelisms of expression, back references, and resumes,
which, as it were, by invisible rivets (43 A) combine the dis-

TIMAEUS

349

cordant elements into an organic whole; by a subtle and dis¬
criminating use of the particles; by the frequent employment of
concrete linked participial constructions; and by an occasional
well-calculated abruptness relieving the monotony of an unin¬
terrupted Isocratean rhythm. Moral and religious unction are
secured by a conscious discrimination of synonyms, by a subtle
use of the particles, by pregnant use and emphatic positions of
qualifying adjectives and adverbs, and by a never failing
Aeschylean grandeur of poetic diction. But the chief artistic in¬
strument of the Timaeus is the Demiourgus. He is no abstract
metaphysical principle. He is an embodiment at once of Plato’s
favorite conception of artistic purpose as opposed to lawless
chance or arbitrary convention, and of the purer monotheistic
aspirations which the great religious poets of the preceding gen¬
eration had associated with the name of Zeus. He is the scien¬
tific workman of the Craty/us, the embodiment of the principle
of cause in the Phi/ebus, the evrexvos bi)i±iovpyb$ of the Laws
(903 C), the T6XWT7JS implied by the Oda rixvrl of the Sophist
(265E), the supreme xuP°T^Xvr\s of the Republic (596 C) who
may be compared to an artist who makes all other things and
also himself. But he is all this conceived no longer as a vague
abstraction, but as a true God, mundi melioris origo, who has
checked the violence and injustice that prevailed in the world,
and by the power of wise persuasion has partly redeemed things
from the dominion of chaos and ancient night. And he is also
the Lord of heaven and earth, who abideth in unchanging unity,
untouched by the blasphemies of anthropomorphic poets; the
moral ruler of the universe, whose eye no evildoer shall escape
though he take the wings of the morning or dive to the utter¬
most depths of the earth; the well-wishing but awful judge, who
hath set man’s feet on the way of wisdom, made him the arbiter
of his own fate, and established forever the law of learning
through suffering and of woe for the worker of evil. By his oper¬
ation and that of his created ministers, description is, in accord¬
ance with the precept of Lessing, transformed into action; the
causal relations of things are revealed to us as the preconceived
purposes of God contending with the limitations of necessity;
anatomy is transfigured into a poetical making of man before
the beginning of years (69 CD, 42 E), and pathology into an
ethical lesson.

389 A 2 ff.
27 AB

Polit. 273 C 1
Tim. 48 A

42 E

Laws 90s A 5 ff.
Tim. 47 AB,42 BC
Aesch. Ag. 176
42 D

Rep. 617 E
Laws 904 C
Gorg. 525 B 7
Rej^. 619 D, 620

Laws 728 BC

86-87 B

CRITIAS

The unfinished Critias , if later than the Timaeus and contem¬
porary with the Laws , exhibits again Plato’s mastery of vivid
description and moral eloquence unimpaired to the end. The
style statisticians find that it exactly conforms to the norm of
Plato’s later style. But no literary critic who reads it as a whole
immediately after the Sophist , Politicus, Timaeus , Philebus , and
Laws will receive that impression. It has something of their
stately elaboration. But it is much more vivid, clear, animated,
and picturesque. That may be because of the subject, which is
always more significant for Plato’s style than the date. The ge¬
ology and landscape of ancient Attica and the Herodotean de¬
scription of the empire of Atlantis that is to clash with that
older ideal Athens, which Plato imagines to have been the reali¬
zation of his Republic , in a grander Persian War for the defense
of civilization, stamp themselves on the imagination of every
reader, and there are few unfinished things in literature that so
kindle the thirst for more as does the proemium of the final
speech of the Creator to the inferior deities.

The design of this unfinished prose epic is indicated in the
Tim. 27 ab Introduction to the Timaeus. There Socrates expresses the de-
Tim. 19 c sire to see the citizens of his ideal city in action. It is according¬
ly arranged that after Timaeus has recited the story of Genesis
or the natural history of creation, Critias shall take up the tale
of the beginnings of human civilization. He will make use of the
story which Solon brought back from Egypt, and, assuming that
Tim. 23 de the Athens of nine thousand years ago was Socrates’ philosoph¬
ic state, will narrate the history of the more glorious Persian
War in which she saved Europe from subjugation by a mon¬
strous barbarian empire which occupied the continent or island
of Atlantis west of the pillars of Hercules. This was the main
theme which Plato’s idealizing patriotism, working a little dif¬
ferently than in the Menexenus , substituted for what in the
692 d 1 Laws seemed to him the sordid realities of the historical war of
Athens with the despotism that sought to enslave Greece. Some

35°

CRITIAS

35 1

of the coloring and details of his picture may have been sug¬
gested by Herodotus’ description of Ecbatana, Babylon, and
Sardis, and the irrigation canals of Mesopotamia. The fortifica¬
tions and the ports of Atlantis may be an imaginative enlarge¬
ment of the docks, arsenals, harbors, and long walls of imperial
Athens, with some suggestions from those of Syracuse. Plato’s
imagination may also have been stimulated by the tradition of
the power and magnificence of the sea-kings of Minoan Crete.
But Plato, like the Socrates of the Phaedrus, could easily invent
Egyptian or any other tales. Atlantis itself is wholly his inven¬
tion, and we can only divine how much of the detail of his de¬
scription is due to images suggested by his reading, his travels,
and travelers’ tales.

Timaeus with a sigh of relief hands over the theme to Critias.
He prays that the god, created anew in his words, may preserve
so much of his discourse as is sound, and that if he has erred he
may suffer the due punishment of error, which is to be corrected.
Critias before beginning asks for indulgence. Pie is to speak of
things remote and dimly known. In literature as in art we are
naturally more critical of representations of things that we know
well, as, e.g., the human body, than of descriptions of natural or
divine things of which our knowledge is imperfect. Socrates
promises him indulgence, humorously anticipating a like request
from Plermocrates in his turn. Critias then, invoking the god¬
dess Memory, begins his tale, as Timaeus closed his, with pray-
er.

The war that he is to describe took place nine thousand years
ago. Instead of a Homeric or Herodotean catalogue Critias will
introduce the various tribes that participate in it as the action
unfolds itself. By way of prelude he will describe only the pro¬
tagonists on either side, Athens and the empire of Atlantis. The
gods, not by strife but by just and friendly allotment, divided
among themselves the supervision of the world, and as kindly
shepherds steered and guided their flocks, their possessions, not
by blows but by the persuasion of the soul. Plephaestus and
Athena, akin both by birth and by the community of philosophy
and the arts, took charge of Attica, a land adapted to virtue and
intelligence. They planted there a breed of children of the soil
whose names are in part dimly remembered! Cecrops, Eiech-

275 B 3

106 AB

Rep. 337 D

106 BC
Tim. 29 C

107 AB

108 AB
108 D

Theaet. 191 D
On Tim. 27 C

108 E

109 A

Euthyph. 6 BC
Rep- 379 E-80 A
Menex. 237 D 1
109 B

Polit. 271 DE
109 C

Heraclit., frag.

ii, Diels
Prot. 321 D 8
Laws 920 D 7
Polit. 274 CD
Tim. 24 D 2
Menex. 237 CD
109 D

On Menex. 237 B

no A

109 DE

Tim. 23 A3
Laws 677 AS

iio A
Ar. Met. 981 B,
20-23

no B

no D
Rep. 416 E 2

no E

in C

Pind. Pyth. 4.265
no E 7
Laws 704 D 5

in D

in A
hi B

112 A
hi E 3
Rep. 433 D, On
Rep. 598 C 1
(Loeb)

112 C
On Laws 691 C

Rep. 372 D 3

352 WHAT PLATO SAID

theus, Erichthonius, and other predecessors of Theseus. But
their deeds have been forgotten, owing to the cataclysms which
at the end of every cycle leave a few solitary unlettered moun¬
taineers to begin the development of civilization again. At the
beginning of every such cycle men’s minds are absorbed in mere
living. Mythology and archaeology begin with the leisure that
comes when the necessities of life have been supplied. Some
things can be recovered by inference. That women then shared
the pursuits of men is apparent from the armed statue of
Athena. And similarly we may assume that the constitution of
this early Athens in other respects resembled that which we de¬
scribed “yesterday” in the separation of the warrior class or
guardians and their acceptance of nothing but a livelihood from
the producing class.

The boundaries of that older Attica extended to the isthmus,
and on the north to the summits of Cithaeron and Parnes. The
heights, Plato says, with humorous reference to a contemporary
controversy with the Boeotians, descended to the sea, leaving
the land of Oropus on the right. The mountains, which now
supply pasturage only for bees, were filled with pasturing cattle
and were well wooded. Until quite recently, indeed, they were
covered with mighty trees which supplied timbers for roofs that
still survive to bear witness to what they were. The land, which
still yields every kind of fruit and grain, produced them in great¬
er abundance then to support a large body of men released from
the labor of the soil, for there was plentiful water which the
impermeable clay conserved. But now the rains of nine thou¬
sand years have swept the rich surface soil away to be lost in the
sea which is everywhere deep on the coasts of this projection
from the mainland, and left the denuded rocks like a bony body
whose flesh has been wasted by disease. The Acropolis then ex¬
tended to the Eridanus and the Ilissus. It included the Pnyx
and Mount Lycabettus and was covered with soil. Farmers, who
were just farmers, and artisans inhabited its levels and its slopes.
The warriors dwelt on the summit about the temple of Athena
and Hephaestus. They lived simply without gold and silver,
eating at common messes and choosing the just mean between
arrogance and illiberality. They transmitted a similar life to
their children’s children and were careful to keep their numbers

CRITIAS

353

ever the same, about twenty thousand. They were guardians of
their fellow-citizens, and the rest of the Greeks accepted their
leadership willingly. They were renowned throughout Europe
and Asia for the beauty of their bodies and the virtue of their
souls.

The corresponding description of the empire of the Atlantids
contains few ideas of general and philosophical interest. But it
reveals Plato as a story-teller who in picturesqueness and fer¬
tility of invention vies with Herodotus, Lucian, and Swift.
Critias does not forget to explain that the numerous Greek
names in his narrative are Solon’s translations of the Egyptian
priest’s rendering of the Atlantid originals. In fact, Plato took
some of the names from the poets and perhaps invented others.
Critias begins with an elaborate genealogy, perhaps in parody of
early Greek logographers. Poseidon, to whom the lot of Atlantis
fell, married Clito, the daughter of one of the aborigines who
lived on a height in a fertile plain that faced the sea, about the
middle of the coast line of the island. There were born to Posei¬
don and Clito five pairs of male twins whom he made kings over
ten divisions of the island. To the eldest of the first pair of twins
he gave the home of his mother and the adjacent domains and
made all the others his vassals. The god himself protected the
central hill by two inclosing bands of earth and three circles of
water, which, as there were then no ships, were impassable.
Later generations dug a ship canal from the sea inland to the
outermost circle of water, built bridges over all three circles,
constructed roofed waterways across the intervening strips of
land, and executed in addition many other mighty works which
Plato describes with such Dantesque precision that they can be
represented on a map. To point the contrast with Athens, he
dwells in the manner of Herodotus on the luxury, wealth, and
numbers of her adversary. In addition to the enormous re¬
sources of the island the Atlantids drew tribute from their de¬
pendencies on the mainland where their rule extended to Egypt
and Tyrrhenia. They mustered 120,000 cavalry, 120,000 hop-
lites, 10,000 war chariots, and 1,200 ships. The effect is that of
the choruses in Aeschylus’ Persae. Critias describes further their
temples, their rites of worship, and the solemn oath which the
ten kings interchanged when, to debate on their common inter-

Rep. 414 B
112 D
112 E

113 A

113 C

113 D

113 E

114 A

1 13 DE

Z15 C ff.

1x4, 115, 116,
117, 118

1 19

Pers. 1-57, 895-
906

119-20

354

WHAT PLATO SAID

120 A-D
Laws 684 AB

120 D

Tim. 41 A-D

120 E

121 A

Menex. 246 E

121 A 9
Rep. 391 En
(Loeb)
121 B s
Rep. 417 B s

Tim. 41 A

ests, they held reunions at intervals of five and six years alter¬
nately, honoring the even and the odd numbers alike. The con¬
tents of this oath or social compact resemble that which the
Laws attributes to the founders of the three Peloponnesian king¬
doms.

Such and so great was the power, concludes Critias, almost in
the phrasing of Herodotus, that God directed against this region
of ours on the following pretext or occasion. This final page of
the Critias resembles the eloquent moral sermons of the Laws in
its edifying tone and the speech of the Demiourgos in the
Timaeus in its style. It is arguable that the intensity of Plato's
ethical purpose tempts him here to attribute to the earlier gen¬
erations of the Atlantids a moral nobility for which little in his
previous description has prepared us and which is not quite con¬
sistent with his main design of contrasting them as Orientals
with the Athenians. But no reader of the original or of Ruskin’s
beautiful version, which I quote, will care to insist on that cavil.

Through many generations, so long as the God’s nature in them yet was
full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves lovingly
to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their uttermost spirit was
faithful and true, and in every wise great; so that, in all meekness of wisdom,
they dealt with each other, and took all the chances of life; and despising all
things except virtue, they cared little what happened day by day, and bore
lightly the burden of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if only their
common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased to¬
gether with them; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon material
possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and affection together
with it. And by such reasoning, and what of divine nature remained in them,
they gained all this greatness of which we have already told; but when the
God’s part of them faded and became extinct, being mixed again and again,
and effaced by the prevalent mortality, and the human nature at last ex¬
ceeded, they then became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell
into shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, hav¬
ing lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the blind hearts
which could not discern the true life, tending to happiness, it seemed that
they were then chiefly noble and happy, being filled with all iniquity of inor¬
dinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of gods, whose Kinghood is
in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay
such punishment upon them as might make them repent unto restraining,
gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from heavens
centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having assembled them,
he said .

LAWS

In spite of Lucian’s sneer, “colder than Plato’s Laws ,” the
masterpiece of Plato’s old age was more closely studied and in¬
telligently appreciated in antiquity than it is today. It has hap¬
pened to eminent modern scholars to deal with verbatim quota¬
tions or obvious reminiscences of the Laws with no recognition
of their source. It has been a commonplace of criticism to con¬
trast its prosy preachments and tediously minute prescriptions
with the fresh, dramatic charm of the minor dialogues and the
large, poetic idealism of the Republic . Critics who have lost
their way between the comprehensive design and the labyrin¬
thine detail have pressed a few confused or corrupt passages, a
few awkward periods, a few abrupt or strained transitions into
the service of the thesis that it is an incoherent aggregation of
fragments put together by some Philip of Opus out of Plato’s
Nachlass . Deviations from the Republic required by the very
design of the work, its hypothesis , as Isocrates, Plato, and Aris¬
totle would put it, are exploited as evidences of a fundamental
revolution in Plato’s social and political opinions. The custom,
in systematic expositions of the Platonic philosophy, of relegat¬
ing the Laws to an appendix, as it were, and the neglect of the
many definite coincidences of thought and formula with the
more dramatic dialogues have confirmed the impression that the
fullest and most explicit enunciation of Plato’s teaching is of
interest only to professional philologists. Its noble and stately,
if sometimes monotonous, rhetoric has been confounded with
the flat, unraised style of the epistles or the solemn and cum¬
brous preciosity of the Epinomis for the maintenance of the
genuineness of those plausible imitations. A few petulant Carlyl¬
ean declamations, a few wilful Ruskinian boutades, have com¬
pletely blinded liberals of the school of Grote and Gomperz to
the true historical significance of this unique combination of an
Aristotelian wealth of good sense, political wisdom, and dis¬
criminating observation with a divinatory insight and a depth
of Hellenic feeling that forever elude the dialectical net and the

355

WHAT PLATO SAID

356

would-be exhaustive categories of that semi-alien encyclopaedist.
The repetitions, the apologies for digressions, the allusions to
the weakness of old age, the self-checks, and the self-praise have
provoked comparisons with the senile maunderings and self-
complacency of Isocrates' latest work.

Deprecation of this injustice does not commit us to the para¬
dox that the Laws portrays persons with the dramatic vividness
of the Protagoras and Gorgias , or embodies abstractions with the
high imaginative vision of the Republic . There are tedious
tracts. There is something of the didacticism, the repetitious¬
ness, the self-complacency, and at the same time the hopeless¬
ness, if not the moroseness, of old age. The years have altered
not only the emphasis of Plato's moods, but perhaps some of
his minor opinions. The style, with some gains, has lost flexi¬
bility, simplicity, and colloquial charm. Little tricks of manner
have passed into mannerisms.

It is a question of degree, of the weight to be attributed to
these things in the interpretation of Plato's philosophy and the
history of his personal development. I think that recept criti¬
cism has overemphasized them, and I shall endeavor to show
by my analysis (i) that the Laws is in Plato's conception essen¬
tially finished, and is on the whole as well composed as is any
equally long and fact-laden treatise in ancient — or in modern —
literature; (2) that the slight and easily explicable divergencies
from the thought of the Republic are completely outweighed by
all-pervading correspondences in principle and in detail; (3)
that allusions to methods and ideas of the dialectical dialogues,
and explicit solutions of problems dramatically presented in the
minor dialogues, make the work almost a complete compendi¬
um of the Platonic philosophy; (4) that the precision, the stately
rhythm, and the religious unction of the style deserve to be
studied for themselves and not merely as foils to the more obvi¬
ous charms of the earlier dialogues.

The existence of the Republic prescribed for an artist of Pla¬
to’s versatility a different design for any subsequent treatise on
politics and sociology. He was no Isocrates to spend forty years
redeveloping the topics and diluting the ideas of the prize com¬
position that “had beggared him." Fundamental truth must,
of course, be repeated. But many things he had said once for

LAWS

357

all, and could thenceforth take for granted by implication and
allusion. The formal demonstration of the thesis of the Gorgias
that virtue and happiness coincide, the censure of Homeric the¬
ology, the definition of the virtues in partial resolution of the
puzzles of the minor dialogues, the psychology and pedagogy of
the scientific studies of the Academy as a propaedeutic to dia¬
lectics, the embodiment in a series of poetical allegories of the
regulative concept of the idea of good — these topics, occupying
more than half of the Republic , are, as we shall see, presupposed
and, when required by the argument, repeated in the Laws. But
an explicit rediscussion of them was not called for except on the
assumption that Plato had changed his opinions, which is beg¬
ging the very question at issue. Nor can we expect him to re¬
write such a masterpiece of art as the evolution of democracy
and tyranny out of the ideal state in the eighth book, or to re¬
cast the eschatological myth that crowns the whole. In the Gor¬
gias and the Phaedo , Plato had already preluded to this incom¬
parable Vision of J udgment. And after the story of Er, anything
that even he could have composed on this theme as a conclusion
to the Laws would have been an anticlimax. He therefore incor¬
porates the “sanction” of the idea of immortality in his main
argument by a few explicit references, fills the space which its
fuller exposition would have occupied with the theodicy of the
tenth book, and concludes his latest work, not on a high poetic
and religious climax, but with an almost pathetically patient
and lucid summary of the simple principles of his lifelong teach- a. infra,
ing and his political philosophy.

The Laws , to put the plot in a nutshell, is an elaborate proj¬
ect of legislation for a supposed new colony to be founded by the
Cretans in a deserted part of their island, set in a large, loose
framework of disquisition on the principles of education and
good government, and the philosophy of Greek history, and in¬
terrupted, or rather relieved in its necessarily arid detail, by
edifying moral and religious discourses and eloquent diatribes
against the radicalism and license of the innovating spirit of the
age. To appreciate, however, the real logical coherence, if not
always artistic unity, that links its infinite detail to its rambling
argument, we must first grasp firmly some of the leading ideas
that dominate and inform the entire work. There are, of course,

>. 406

35 8

WHAT PLATO SAID

if we include restatements of the principles of the Republic and
the Politicus, many recurrent and guiding thoughts: The de¬
pendence of all reform on education, and the conception of mor¬
al education as the development and inculcation of instinctive
right habit and true opinion in relation to pleasure and pain; the
determination of morals by mores; the futility of legislation
whose spirit and aim is counteracted by the unregulated habits
and tastes of private life; the consequent censorship of educa¬
tion, music, and art; the subordination of art to ethics, and the
deprecation of change; the insistence on specialization of func¬
tion, and the subjection of all life and action to austere discipline
and regulation; the anticipation of the Aristotelian doctrine of
the mean and its application to the theory of a mixed govern¬
ment; the denunciation of the unlimited love of money; the dis¬
tinction between the self and the things of self, between the
three kinds of “goods,” between the two kinds of equality, be¬
tween the good and the necessary. But dominating these and
the entire political philosophy of the Laws are the three funda¬
mental interrelated principles that politics is an ethical science,
that the true statesman subordinates everything to a conscious
unitary moral end, that the prohibitions and penalties of posi¬
tive law ought to be accompanied by explanatory or hortatory
preambles. 7

1 he first three books of the Laws may be termed in modern
parlance a sociological and historical introduction. Captious
critics object that it is disproportionately long. But if the work
is thought dull now, what would it have been if Plato had limit¬
ed himself to the promulgation of a code for the new colony? It
is Plato s avowed intention to make it an edifying textbook, and
859 c he justifies his many digressions by the reminder that we are not
*1180 b'a”10' hut are only becoming legislators.

In form the Laws is a dialogue between an Athenian, who
clearly repreBents Plato, and two quite simple-minded inter¬
locutors, the Spartan Megillos and the Cretan Cleinias. Their
conversation is somewhat improbably supposed to be held dur-
625 b ing a walk from Cnossos to the cave of Idaean Zeus on a long
722 c summer day. Apart from one pretty allusion to the shade trees
62s bc and meadows on the way, there is no mise en scene or dramatic
setting. The dialogue begins abruptly with the Athenian’s ques-

LAWS

359

tion, God is it, or some man that is thought to be the author of
the provisions of your laws? God, it is God, is the Cretan’s re¬
ply. The emphasis and triple repetition do not mean that Plato
anticipated the Trinity or that the state of Plato’s old age is to
be a theocracy as Dunning and many others have inferred. It is
simply an example of Greek religious feeling and of that unction
of style that closes the Republic with “fare well” and each divi¬
sion of the Divine Comedy with the stars. From this start the
Athenian leads his simple interlocutors on to the consideration
of first principles. The character of institutions, the Cretan
thinks, depends on topography and climate. But the aim of the
Cretan legislator was preparedness for war, since war, explicit or
tacit, is the natural condition of all states. The Athenian gen¬
eralizes the idea of war to include individuals and the conflicts
within the soul. This involves the puzzling idea of self-control,
the superiority of the better to the worse, not of the worse to the
better. Whether the worse is ever superior to the better is a con¬
tentious question which we may waive. Our topic is legislation,
not argument about the seemliness of words in relation to con¬
ventional opinion. Government by consent is best. But he who
rules by consent does not assume war or faction as the basis of
his polity. Victory over self is not the best thing but only an
indispensable means, like medicine, and the true statesman will
make peace, not war, his end. There are two kinds of war, ex¬
ternal and faction. The poet Tyrtaeus praises the heroes of ex¬
ternal war; Theognis, the man who can be trusted in faction.
Trustworthiness involves all virtues, but brutal mercenaries can
be hired to face the foe in battle. Bravery in this sense is the
lowest virtue, and perfect justice the highest. We must assume
that the divine legislators of Crete and Sparta aimed not at
bravery but at all virtue, and we must classify laws not by the
external occasions of their application but by their reference to
all forms of virtue. Such a classification of real goods alone
would supply a philosophical scheme for a complete code of
laws.

Goods are of two kinds, human and divine. The human are
dependent on the divine, and if any city wins the greater good,
it acquires also the lesser. If not, it is deprived of both. The
lesser goods are health, beauty, physical strength, and fourth

624 A

On Tim. 36 E

626 D 5

On Laches 185 B
10

626 CD

627 A
Rep. 431 A
627 B
627 D

627 E

628 A
628 D

Gorg. 478-79

628 DE

Cf. 803 D, 829-30

629 C

630 A
77 ff.

630 B

630 E
714 BC

Gorg. 515 BC

631-32

631 B

Menex. 246 E
631 C

WHAT PLATO SAID

360

631 D

632 A
On Hipp. Maj.
286 C

Rep. 413 E-414 A

632 B

632 C

632 C

wealth, not the blind (god), but the keen-sighted that follows
wisdom. First of the divine goods is wisdom; second is a sober
habit of mind accompanied by intelligence; third, when blended
with these and with bravery, is justice; and fourth is bravery.
The divine goods precede the human by nature and the legis¬
lator must so order them All his other commands to the citi¬
zens must refer the human goods to the divine and the divine to
the sovereign reason.

In their marriage unions, in the birth and nurture of chil¬
dren, male and female, and in all the conduct of their lives from
youth to age, he must keep watch and ward over them and
teach them what to honor and what to hold in disesteem. He
must have been a watchful observer of their pains, their pleas¬
ures, their appetites, in all their associations and dealings with
one another and of the serious passion of their loves, and must
apportion praise and blame to these things rightly in the very
language of his laws. And again he must be observant of their
angers and fears and the perturbations of their souls in misfor¬
tune or in the escape from bad fortune by good and in all the
affections that befall men in disease, war, poverty, and their
opposites, and he must teach and define the honorable and the
base disposition of soul in all these contingencies.

After this the lawgiver must needs study and regulate the ac¬
quisitions and the expenditures of the citizens, the forming and
dissolution of their contractual obligations, voluntary or invol¬
untary, and the presence or defect of justice therein. He must
assign due honor to those who yield willing obedience to the
laws and for the disobedient prescribe definite penalties, until,
arriving at the end of every human polity, he ordains the man¬
ner of burial for each and all, and the honors that they shall
severally receive. He whose discernment has devised such a
polity will finally place at the head of his constitution guardians
of the laws, some functioning by right opinion, others by real
knowledge, that thus reason binding all things together in unity
may exhibit them subservient to soberness and righteousness,
and not to the greed of wealth and the pride of ambition.

This program is not superstitiously followed, but it sufficient¬
ly outlines the main course of the argument. There are many
translations and matter-of-fact analyses in which those who are

LAWS

361

interested may find any slight details omitted here. The legis¬
lator, as said, must provide guardians, some guided by wisdom,
others only by right opinion. Provided our meaning is clear, it
matters little whether we speak of the virtues as parts of virtue.
Courage may be generalized to include resistance to the pleas¬
ures that flatter desire and make wax the hearts of the seeming
austere. It is more shameful to be vanquished by pleasure than
by fear and the Pythian lawgiver cannot have intended to or¬
dain a lame and halting valor. What Cretan or Spartan institu¬
tions teach men to taste of pleasures and yet remain masters of
them? Spartan and Cretan youths must praise their own laws,
but others, when youths are absent, may criticize them. For
knowledge of what is amiss may bring a remedy if the criticism
is uttered in a kindly spirit. There is surely need of a discipline
in temperance as well as in bravery. But here Crete and Sparta
have no advantage over casual happy-go-lucky governments.
The complications of things make it hard to realize in deed
what we affirm in words. Gymnastics are good. Yet they have
led to faction and unnatural practices. Pleasure and pain are
two natural springs. Their right use is happiness. If a Spar¬
tan boasts that you would never see the whole city drunk at
Sparta as at Tarentum, an Athenian might retort with criticism
of the license of Spartan women. But we are examining princi¬
ples. Many peoples condemn intoxication; others practice and
approve it. The Spartan retort, “put arms in our hands and we
chase them,” proves nothing. Victories and defeats are acci¬
dents of history and irrelevant proofs of superior merit.

Men are too hasty in praise and blame. The argument for and
against intoxication and the use of wine may serve as an exam¬
ple of the right method. We can judge a practice rightly only if
it is rightly managed. Convivial drinking bouts have never been
rightly conducted. Their president or ruler should himself be
sober and wise. So managed, they might contribute not a little
to education, and education produces good men and brings vic¬
tory, while victory, begetting insolence, often produces the op¬
posite. There are Cadmean victories, but no Cadmean educa¬
tion. The service of wine to education is a delicate point in
which only the assurance of a god would justify dogmatism.
But the Athenian is willing to state his opinion if he can do so

633 a

On Laches 191
DE

633 D

633 E

Rep. 535 D
Tim. 44 C

634 A

634 E

635 AB

635 E 7
Gorg. 503 D 7

636 AB
Cf. 836 C
636 DE

637 BC
Cf. 806 A-C

637 DE

638 A

638 B
638 C

On Hipp. Maj.
286 C

638 E

Polit. 286-87

639 C

640 E
639 D

640 D
671 D

Herod. I. 166
641 C
641 D

641-42

WHAT PLATO SAID

642 c
642 CD
9Si B
Rep. 520 B
On Meno 99 E

643 B

643 DE

644 A
644 C
Tim. 69 D

Phileb. 39 DE

644 D
Theaet. 177 D
Minos 314 C 1

645 A

645 B
Rep. 621 B

645 C
645-46
646 B ff.

Gorg. S2i E
647 E

648 B

362

without offense. And he can, for Megillus’ family is proxenus of
Athens at Sparta and he has learned to love Athens by defend¬
ing it. He loves the language and believes that good Athenians
are exceptionally good because their goodness is of grace divine
and not enforced.

The power of education is such that he who is to be good at
anything must practice it from childhood in jest and earnest.
He must begin early to love what he is to do as a man. Educa¬
tion is fundamentally not the acquisition of a trade or a tech¬
nique, but the development of good citizenship. Mere smart¬
ness without wisdom and culture does not deserve the name. As
a rule, those who are rightly educated become good. There are
in man two opposing counsellors, pleasure and pain, and thereto
opinions about the future, whose common name is expectation,
fear, and confidence, and over all the estimate of better and
worse which when it is the decree of a state is named law. Each
of us is a puppet, a plaything of God, or perhaps his serious cre¬
ation — we do not know — and there are cords that pull the pup¬
pets this way and that. Our task is to co-operate with the gentle
guidance of the golden cord of reason, and make ourselves the
ministers of law, that everywhere the golden kind may prevail
over the others. So the myth of virtue and the tale that we are
puppets will be saved and the paradox of self-control will reveal
its meaning, and we shall understand that the city or the man
who has attained truth about his propensities and his ideals
must follow it in his life. And so when virtue and vice have been
distinguished, we shall know what to think of education and all
other pursuits, and shall perhaps not deem it a waste of time to
discuss so seemingly trivial a matter as the right use of wine.

Wine, then, intensifies temptations and relaxes inhibitions.
To the objector who asks who would put an enemy in his mouth
to steal away his brains, we reply that we take into our bodies
harmful drugs that will benefit them in the end. If there were a
drug that intensified fear and weakened courage, legislators
would gladly use it to test the bravery of their citizens. There is
no such potion. But for the other kind of courage, the temper¬
ate sobriety that will not yield to our lower impulses and un¬
disciplined instincts, we have such a drug in wine. Our rulers

LAWS

363

may use it as a safe test of character in such regulated banquets
as we have described. n

Primary education, we repeat, is getting a right attitude to- 6s0°a
ward pleasures and pains. Intelligence and stable right opinions Pout. 309 c
come later, and he is lucky who gets them in old age. When rea- 6§J|° ^

son arrives, the harmony of feeling with reason is virtue. By Rep. 4i2A(Loeb)
education we now mean the training of youth in pleasure and 654 cd
pain to like and dislike the right things. The festivals of the
Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus have been given by gods to men 653 d
as a release from cares and the hardships of life. No young crea- 653 e
ture can be quiet. But man alone has a sense of rhythm and 654 a
order in his movements. Hence music and dancing. The well- 654b
educated man will sing and dance rightly or beautifully. But Cfutl’S6c n.
what is right and beautiful? All control of education will be
worthless unless our hunt discovers this. The beautiful in all Rep. 432 B (Loeb)
things is intimately associated with the good. And to sum up, 65s b
we will call things that are symbols of virtue beautiful and those 659 b a.
that represent or imitate vice ugly. Re>>- 401-4

Why, then, do our judgments vary? The multitude affirm 65s c
that pleasure is the criterion of art and music. That which imi- 655 d
tates our own character gives pleasure. If a man s nature is op- gsse^ ^ ^
posed to his acquired habits, his praises will necessarily contra- &I2
diet his feelings; he will take pleasure in things that he is
ashamed of in the presence of those whose judgments he re- 656 a
spects. The result of these contradictions is that he will be men- 6Se ab
tally assimilated to what he likes. Good laws, then, will not al¬
low poetically gifted natures to employ in the education and 656 c
educative entertainment of the young any rhythms that happen 829 cd
to give pleasure to the poet. They order these things better in 656 de
Egypt where the types of art have been fixed for ten thousand, CC799A
really ten thousand, years. Without delaying to criticize Egypt
in other respects, we may use this as proof that legislation can
regulate these matters. There the spirit of hedonistic innova- 6S7ab
tion is powerless to corrupt tradition by stigmatizing it as Vic- 657 b

torian.” .

Now we feel pleasure when we think we fare well, and when
we feel pleasure we think that we do fare well, and, being happy,
cannot keep quiet. The young will dance and sing spontaneous- 657 d
ly. But when the pert and nimble spirit of youth abandons us

36 4

WHAT PLATO SAID

elders, we yearn to recall it and in our hours of relaxation we
657 e praise and prize most the artist who pleases us best. Is pleasure,
6S8C-e then, the only test of art? We elders would take most pleasure
in a good recital of Homer by a rhapsode; young men and edu¬
cated women delight in tragedy; children will choose the pup-
6S8E pets and older boys comedy. Who shall decide? Pleasure may
Rep. 582 c-e be the test of art, but it must be the pleasure of the best and the
onLache^84 best educated. The true critic and judge will not accept the
judgment of the mob or yield to their clamors. His business is
70? a to teach, not to be taught. To give the people what it likes
659 c creates a theatrocracy and corrupts the pleasures of the audi-
Gorg. 502 bc ence.

659 cd We return to the point that education is the habituation of
646s3 a the young to the rule of right reason, as established in custom

659 e and law. But youthful souls cannot endure unmitigated serious-
Luc?ot!i.3935Aff7 ness. Hence as physicians contrive to make salutary foods pleas¬
ant to the taste, and unwholesome foods distasteful, so our
poets must be persuaded or compelled to use beautiful words
and rhythms to imitate the motions and tones of virtue. There

660 b may be some attempt at regulation in Crete and Sparta, as

compared with other Greek cities. But that does not suffice. It
660 c is unpleasant to denounce incurable abuses. But we must. Our
660E-661E demand is that the absolute and idealistic ethics of the Gorgias
662 a and Republic be affirmed and taught. It is not enough to declare
cf.733 that the immoral life is shameful or bad. We must affirm it the
Rep. 581 e least pleasurable. Plato is as certain- of this as of the existence

662 b of the island of Crete. His faith in the “sovereignty of ethics” is

as fixed as that of the Catholic church as proclaimed by Car¬
dinal Newman in a paragraph deprecated as extravagant by

662 de Dean Inge. If a lawgiver or a father admits that there are two

types of life, the righteous and the happy, he can find no answer
Lysis 207 d 7 to the boy’s question: Don’t you wish me to be happy, father?

663 ab The only safe doctrine is that which refuses to divorce pleas¬

ure from righteousness. The lawgiver must somehow convince
youth that, whatever the feelings of the unjust, from the point
Ar' E0,‘aHi6^|76 of view of the just man the righteous life is the more pleasurable.
663 c And surely the judgment of the better soul is the more valid.

663 d This is the truth, and if it were not, a lawgiver worth his salt

would affirm it for the good of the young. It may be thought not

LAWS

365

easy to persuade them, yet the general acceptance of the story
of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth shows that men may be
taught to believe anything. All our choruses, then, must unite
in chanting that the gods declare the best life to be the pleasant¬
est. A Dionysiac chorus of elders is an odd thing, but it must
join in the chant. The young do not need wine, and it is a mis¬
take to add fire to fire. But we may use wine to bring back the
plasticity of youth to chill and stiff old age and overcome its re¬
luctance to let itself go in song and dance. Cretans and Spar¬
tans may not understand this, for their polity is that of a camp,
not of a city. We do not mean to disparage them but follow
where the argument leads.

We may distinguish in all things that please and in all arts
(1) the pleasure itself, (2) what we may call correctness, and
(3) benefit. An imitation may give pleasure, but it is to be
judged by its correctness and its benefit. Music, then, which is
an art of imitation, is to be estimated not by pleasure but by the
truth of its imitation of the beautiful and the good. The com¬
petent judge must know, first, what it is; second, that it is true
and right; and, third, that it is good. He cannot know the third
without the second. There is especial danger that bad music
will induce the love of bad characters and moods. Our chorus
of elders must be sufficiently educated in music to avoid the in¬
congruity of words, gestures, and tune with characters, and the
realist's confounding of the voices of men, the cries of animals,
and the noise of instruments. And they must disdain the mere
virtuosity and technique of instrumental music divorced from
the significance of words. For they are to be our judges. It is
absurd to suppose that the mob can distinguish good and bad
music. In this sense and not in technique the elders must have
received a more accurate education than the multitude.

And, to return to our point, the inhibitions of age must be
removed by the exhilaration of wine, if they are to lead the
choruses that chant in praise of the virtuous life. And the legis¬
lator must devise sympotic laws to preserve order at our drinking
bouts and put into those whose self-control is thus relaxed that
fear of the Lord which we call aidos and the sense of shame. So
regulated, conviviality will foster friendship, not breed quarrels.
Let us not then disparage unqualifiedly God's gift of the vine.

664 a
Rep. 414 C

664 B

RC£ 858° B 581

665 B

666 A

666 B

666 E

667 A 9

667 BC

667-68

668 B

669 AB

668 C

669 B

669 C-670 B

Rep. 396 B (Loeb),

397 A

670 B

700 E-701 A
734 B 6
Prot. 317 A

670 DE

Cf. 963 A

671 A ff.

671 CD

647 A 10

671 E

672 A

366

WHAT PLATO SAID

672 B

Cratyl. 400 D
Herod. II. 61,

65, 171
672 CD

653 E
657 C

673 A

673 B
Cf. 796 D

674 A

674 C

Book III
676 A ff.

677 A

677 BC

677 CD

678 A

676 A
678 B
On 679 B
678 CD
Thucyd. I. 2. 2

678 E

The legend that the madness of wine is Dionysus’ vengeance for
Hera’s treatment of him we may leave to those who think it safe
to tell such tales of the gods. What we say is that before the
coming of reason every creature raves and cries and prances in
disorderly fashion, and that the gifts of Apollo, the Muses, and
Dionysus rightly used are remedies for this disorder, and not
punishments. But the choric art includes not only the music
that restores health and harmony to the soul, but the move¬
ments of dancing, which in so far as they promote the excellence
of the body may be generalized as the art and science of gym¬
nastics. In the presence of a Spartan and a Cretan we cannot
omit that. But to summarize our discussion of intoxication:
We approve it only when regulated as we have prescribed, but
not if left to the license of personal caprice. And we would re¬
strict the practice, as the Carthaginians do, more rigidly than the
Cretans and Spartans. No general on campaign must use wine,
no slave, no member of the government, no pilot, no juryman,
no counselor, no one must drink it by day except for health, nor
by night if he contemplates procreation. We shall not need
many vineyards.

The starting-point of political and social philosophy is the
thought of infinite past time and the endless changes and trans¬
formations of life that it has witnessed. There is truth in ancient
legends that tell of floods and cataclysms and the periodic de¬
struction of mankind. We may start with the rebuilding of civ¬
ilization after such a flood by the rustic survivors on the moun¬
tain slopes. They would be unacquainted with the arts and
sophistications of cities, and all tools and their uses would have
perished. If civilization had been continuous from all eternity,
there could be no new discoveries today or in recent centuries.
From these primitive survivors, wandering lone and afraid in the
vast solitudes, have come all the cities and arts that we know —
all the wealth and all the woe. Their simple life could not fur¬
nish perfect types of virtue or of vice. Progress was gradual, not
sudden or catastrophic. After a time they found courage to de¬
scend from the heights. Communication and travel were diffi¬
cult. Iron and copper had been lost and the mines destroyed;
there could be little woodcutting, and such tools as remained
soon wore out. There were no wars. For loneliness made them

LAWS

367

welcome the sight of their kind; and in the abundance of pastur¬
age and hunting there was no contention for food. There was no
lack of utensils and clothes, for God gave men the arts of mold¬
ing and weaving, which do not require iron, in anticipation of
such needs. They were not poor then, nor, since there was no
gold and silver, rich. They were good for these reasons and be¬
cause of the “simple-mindedness” that made them believe what
they were told of good and evil and the gods. They were not
quick to think evil like the smart youngsters of today. What
need had they, then, of law, and who was their lawgiver? They
lived by custom and patriarchal law, which is in itself one form
of polity. It is a kind of “dynastic” rule found among Greeks
and barbarians, and attributed by Homer to the Cyclopes.

They have neither “dooms” nor counsel-taking assemblies,

But they inhabit the heights of the mountains that soar into heaven,
Dwelling in hollow caves and each one lays down the law to
Wife and children himself and none pays heed to another.

The innocent Cleinias thinks this Homer must have been a
charming poet. He has heard some other good things of his.
Megillus opines that he describes an Ionian rather than a Spar¬
tan life. At any rate, these verses may testify to the fact that
government was once the rule of the fathers and elders.

The next step would be a group of such in the foothills ringed
around with a fence of rubble to guard them against the beasts.
When many such groups unite, each preferring its own folkways
and gods, the necessity of making a choice brings us all una¬
wares to the beginning of legislation. They must appoint dele¬
gates to make a selection among the laws and establish a kind of
aristocracy of the former “heads,” or, it may be, a royalty.
Homer again is witness to a third stage when he speaks of the
founding of Ilium in the plain. This could happen only after
many years when they had forgotten the terrors of the flood.
Other cities, too, were founded which warred on Ilium for ten
years, during which factions and disorders arose at home, and
expulsion of tribes which returned from exile calling themselves
Dorians instead of Achaeans because their leader was a Dorian.
And from this point on the Spartans take up the tale — or fable.

We have thus a historical basis for our reflections on the
philosophy of politics and the causes of the conservation and

679 AB

Lucret. V. 1112 ff.

679 C
679 c

680 A

680 BC

680 D

681 A

681 C
681 CD

681 E

II. XX. 216 ff.

682 BC
682 CD

682 E

683 AB

368

WHAT PLATO SAID

Menex. 2398ds destruction of states. Let us transport ourselves in imagination
to the time of the founding of Argos, Messene, and Lacedaemon.
We can now verify in an actual case the principle that govern-

684 a ments are dissolved only by themselves. There was a sort of so¬
on crito si-52 cial compact. The kings swore not to make their rule more
severe, the people not to upset the government, and all three
states to aid one another against any violation of these princi-
684 cd pies. These states were also fortunate in starting with a com¬
et. 736 c parative and sufficient equality of property, which removed the
chief causes of faction and the greatest embarrassment of modern
legislators.

Why, then, did they fail, and fight with one another and
686 cd truckle to the barbarians? It is a natural human illusion when
contemplating such a power to think wistfully of all the good it
might have accomplished if rightly used. But what is our cri¬
terion when we say “rightly”? The common desire of human
nature is that all or most things should happen in obedience to
6878cd the bidding of our own souls, and on this desire we base our un¬
considered prayers, whereas we ought to pray not that things
may conform to our will, but that our will may conform to our

687 e reason. As we said in the beginning, the aim of legislation

688 a should not be war, but virtue; and so the argument returns upon
On Phaedrf 251 itself. And we affirm in jest or earnest that prayer as the ex¬
pression of desire is unsafe unless guided by reason. Men and

688 nations are shipwrecked on conduct. This is the lesson of that
history, then and now and for all time to come. The Peloponne¬
sian federation broke down not from insufficiency in the arts of
on ifys?sexh84AB war, but from what we may term the grossest ignorance, the
On 645 b disharmony between the feelings and the moral judgment, the
Rep‘ 442 ab revolt of the populace of appetites in the soul against its natural
689 cd rulers. We will exclude from office the cunning and the quick if
they are ignorant in this way, and admit and count wise their

689 e opposites, though they can neither swim nor read. Rulers we

must have, and there are many claimants and claims of rule:

690 a the claim of parents, the claim of birth, the claim of age, the

claim of the master to rule the slave, of the strong to rule the
on Gorg. 4S4 b weak, as Pindar is quoted, the claim of wisdom to rule ignorance

690 c — and we may add the claim of the fortunate and favored of
At. Pol. 1301’* b ° heaven. The conflict of these claims is a fountainhead of fac-

LAWS

369

tion. And we may well ask light-hearted legislators how they
propose to treat it. Forgetful of Hesiod’s admonition that the
half is more than the whole, those kings abandoned themselves
to luxury, broke their oaths, and sought to overreach the laws.
It is easy now to see what ought to have been done, but if any¬
one had foreseen it then, he would have been wiser than we.

The mean is better than the extreme everywhere. No mortal
soul can endure in youth unlimited and irresponsible power.
Sparta was saved by the Providence or the historical accidents
that tempered the autocracy of the king, and gave it a mixed
government of two kings, a senate of elders, and the check or
bridle of the ephors. If this had happened in the other two king¬
doms, Hellas would not have been shamed as she was in the
Persian invasion; for our defense, although we won in the end,
was disgraceful. It was only the tardy union of Athens and
Sparta that prevented the hybridization of the Greeks and other
peoples under a Persian conquest.

The object of our censures is to determine the principles of
statesmanship, and whatever the end we name — temperance,
wisdom, or friendship — we always mean one and the same thing.
There are two mother-types of polities, of which all others are
diversifications, the autocracy of Persia and the liberty-loving
democracy of Athens. Each has degenerated from its earlier and
better condition. The Persian monarchy has been corrupted by
luxury and the relaxed womanish and undisciplined education
of the heirs to the throne. No such education can produce ex¬
cellence, which is the one thing a state should honor provided
it is accompanied by sophrosyne. Without that puzzling and
indefinable quality no cleverness, no other virtue, is of any ac¬
count. First of goods are the goods of the soul, if conjoined with
sophrosyne ; second, the goods of the body; third, possessions.

We have been betrayed into these moral reflections by con¬
sideration of the Persian rulers who, through exaggeration of
the principle of despotism, governed in their own interest, hat¬
ing and hated, and bred a population lacking in public spirit,
useless for self-defense, and holding nothing in honor but wealth.
The excesses of the spirit of liberty in like manner destroyed the
good old constitution of Athens that reared the victors of Mara¬
thon, when the citizenry was divided into four classes — and awe

Rep. 426 D
(Loeb)

690 £

691 A

691 B
691 C

691 E

692 D

693 BC

693 c

693 DE

694-96

Laches 179 CD

Ale. I. 121 C ff.
694 A
Rep. 492 E

On 627 A

696

697 B

697 D 6
Rep. 417 B 2

698 B ff.

37°

WHAT PLATO SAID

698-99 was their master, and all were servants of the law. On this
theme the Athenian speaks with the patriotic eloquence of the

240-41 Menexenus — and worthily of his country, the Spartan says. In

700 a the good old times the people was not master of all things, but
424 bc s. was, so to speak, the willing slave of law. The corruption of mu-

701 bc sic and art, as said in the Republic , led the way in the develop¬
ment of a licentious liberty, that bred Titanic natures who paid
no heed to law, to oaths, or to faith or the gods. Shall we pull up
the argument like a bolting horse and ask what is the pertinency
on 70s d of all this ? It is, as we have said, that the true aims of the states-

701 d man are moral and may be described again as freedom, har-
701 Eff. mony, and right reason. It was to point this moral that we dis¬
cussed the two types of government, the Persian and the Athe¬
nian, and the Dorian camp, and the city of Dardanus on the foot¬
hills, and the earliest men, survivors of the flood, and before
that the question of music and the use of wine. We sought to
discover the best city and the happiest private life. The test of

on 681 c our conclusions would be their application. And by a fortunate
chance we may apply them, or a selection of them, to a new
colony which the community of Crete proposes to found in a
deserted part of the island. Let us begin.

'704 The new city will have the soil of Crete, not too fertile, yet
producing all things so that there will be little need of imports.
It will fortunately be some ten miles distant from the seemingly

70s a pleasant, but really salt and bitter neighborage of the sea. Our

705 d one aim in these considerations, it will be remembered, is the
virtue of our citizens, and to this sea and sea-power are adverse.
From maritime warfare even soldiers acquire bad habits— a
Laches 191 thing always to be shunned. It was not Salamis that saved

707 c Greece but Marathon and Plataea. And in any case, the object
Gorg. S12DE of life and politics is not survival, but goodness, whether the

time be long or short.

707 e The population of the new colony will come from all Crete

708 a with some admixture of Peloponnesians. The ideal would be

708 b rather a homogeneous population swarming like bees from one

709 a centre. The difficulties of dealing with a mixed population

tempt us to say that the human legislator is impotent and

709 b chance rules all — or rather God, and with God chance and op¬
portunity. Yet something remains for human art, and the po-

LAWS

37i

litical artist may declare what he would pray for as the best con¬
ditions for the exercise of his art. Give me a dictatorship, he
would say — a city ruled by a young tyrant. He must have a
keen intellect and memory, an enterprising and magnificent
spirit, and with these qualities temperance or sophrosyne in the
ordinary, not the philosophical, sense of the word. And he must
be fortunate in having as counselor a true legislator. Our mean¬
ing is that the conjunction of such a tyrant and such an adviser
is the condition of the most speedy and efficient establishment
of the good state. We are not proposing a tyrannical govern¬
ment in perpetuity. But no aversion to the name of “tyrant”
can alter our conviction that if our ideal ever has been or ever
shall be realized it must be by the union of political power with
philosophic and divinely inspired love of sobriety and righteous-

709 E

Cf. 735 D 739 A

710 C
Rep. 487 A
503 C

Rep. 430 E (Loeb)
On 690 C
710 CD

710 DE
712 C

Rep. 577 AB ff.

Rep. 473 CD
499 C

711 D

ness.

To return to the molding of our city. What shall be its con- 712 b
stitution? Not democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, or monarchy
as understood in present practice. For these are not polities but 713 e
factions. The mixed governments of Sparta and Crete are the
only existing polities that deserve the name. A mythical illus- p0n£268Eff.
tration will bring out our point. In the age of Cronos men were ^ V74®
ruled by superior beings because Cronos knew that no human
soul can endure autocratic power. But while we are ruled by
mortals our only salvation is the reign of law, by which we must
understand the rule and apportionment of reason. Such govern- 713 e
ment by the higher part of ourselves is the nearest practicable
imitation of the mythical government by gods. We come back 714 bc
again to the fundamental issue. Laws are not to be classified by
forms of government, but by their reference to the moral end of on 693 c
all law. So long as men believe that justice is the advantage of
the stronger, that is, of the existing rulers, so long as they recog¬
nize might as the chief of those claims to rule of which we spoke,
so long as men fight to gain office and use it for their selfish ends,
our governments will only be factions. There can be no salva- 715 b
tion except where the law governs and officeholders are servants ct. 700 a
of the law. That is a truth which old eyes discern more clearly 71s de
than young. When our citizens are assembled, we must first symp. 219 a
exhort them. God is the beginning, the middle, and the end,
and eternal justice is his minister. Happy the man who walks

372

WHAT PLATO SAID

716 c
Rep. 352 B

Lysis 214

Theaet. 176 BC

716 E-717 A
Phileb. 23 B 8
Syrap. 219 B 4

717 B
On Crito 50 E
Eur. Hec. 403

718 A

718 C

718 D

890 D 2, 907 C 5

719 c

Phaedr. 245 A
Meno 99 CD

719 DE

719 E
On 691 C

720 A

Cf. 857 CD
Xen. Oecon. XV. 9

721 B

humbly In their train. But he who exalts himself and abandons
God shall destroy himself and his city. God is the measure of all
things, not man. God loves his like, and he is likest God who
imitates God’s goodness. The worship of God by the wicked is
labor lost.

We have, as it were, set up the target of our chief end. Among
the shafts that we aim at it will be (i) due service of all gods and
minor divinities; (2) honor and subservience to parents, not
only in deed, but in words, for light and winged words may draw
after them the heaviest penalties, (3) the fulfilment of all due
obligations to others, as the detail of our legislation will pre¬
scribe. But there are some things that need to be said by way of
persuasion rather than of command. Their object is to prepare
the minds of the hearers to receive more favorably what follows.
Even a slight result of such exhortations will be welcome, for
there are none too many who follow after righteousness, and the
multitude prefer the broad way that leadeth to evil to what
Hesiod calls the sweat and the steep path of virtue. The inspired
poet, we have said, imitates contrary types and characters, and,
not knowing which is best, often contradicts himself. But the
lawgiver must not say two things about one, but always one and
the same. For example, there may be a moderate funeral, or one
whose expenditure exceeds or falls short of the mean. The poet
will choose the one that suits his personages. The lawgiver will
prescribe the just mean and we may ask him to define it. Shall
he command and threaten and pass on to another law, or, as
boys beg of their physicians, shall he treat us in the gentler of
two ways? There are two kinds of physicians, the rough and
ready empirics who run their rounds from slave to slave and
deliver their ukases without explanation, and the cultural who
educate themselves and their patients by discussion of their
maladies and prescribe only after persuasion. Which is the bet¬
ter way for the legislator?

Since marriage and procreation are the starting-points of
states, we may illustrate the distinction by a specimen law of
marriage in the two styles. The first will read: Citizens shall
marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five on penalty of,
etc. The second will explain that marriage and children are the
only satisfaction of the inborn desire for immortality, and that

LAWS

373

it is impious to deprive one’s self of this with deliberate intent.
He who heeds shall be scatheless. He who does not shall be
fined, that he may not seem to win ease and profit by his selfish
celibacy. Surely, although the Spartans usually prefer brevity,
it would be silly to sacrifice our main object in order to spare a
few words. And it is gross oversight in legislators to employ
only force when they might blend it with the efficacy of persua¬
sion. Our whole conversation from dawn to midday thus far has
been only an introduction to the laws. Generalizing, we may
point out that all speeches have proems, all music, all musical
nomoi , as they are called, preludes. But no one hitherto has
spoken of a prelude or preamble to real laws. Good laws should
have two parts: the law proper, which is the command, and the
preamble, the object of which is to win good will and attention
and so make the law more intelligible. There should be such a
preamble to the laws in general and to each particular law. Our
discourse on duties to the gods and parents and the dead, al¬
though not delivered as such, was the first part of a general pre¬
amble. We may complete it by a consideration of the right con¬
duct of life in serious business and relaxation, in respect of our
souls, our bodies, and our possessions, which will educate both
the speaker and the hearers.

The second half of the general proemium with which the fifth
book opens is an eloquent sermon and resume of Plato’s practi¬
cal ethics and religion which might be instructively compared
with the paraenetic discourses of Isocrates. It is full of sound
admonition and quotable sayings much quoted or paraphrased
in the later classical literature of moral and religious edification.
All men in youth think they know how to honor their own souls.
They blame others, not themselves, for all evils. They fear
death without reason. They dishonor, not honor, the soul by
preferring to it pleasure or wealth or life or beauty, or even
health. For all the gold on or under the earth cannot weigh in
the scales against virtue. They do not understand the true pun¬
ishment of wickedness, which is to be cut off from the commun¬
ion of the good and likened to the evil. They do not believe that
it is better to be justly punished than to evade the penalties of
wrong. And so in respect of their bodies and their possessions
they are unaware that the mean is better than the extremes of

721 c 7
838 E 7

On 718 CD

722 AB
Prot. 343 A

On Polit. 286 B

722 CD
Rep. 357 A
53i D 8

On Phaedr. 247 C

On 718 CD

723 B

724

On 697 B

Book V

On Soph. 230 AB

727 A
727 B

On Phaodo 90 D

727 D

728 DE
631 C

Rep. 591 C
728 A

728 B
Cf. 904 E
Theaet. 176 E-
177 A
728 C

728 E

374

WHAT PLATO SAID

On 691 C

729 B

729 E

730 A

730 C
Cf. 630 A

Rep. 613 DE

73i A

On Phaedr. 247 A
7

73i B
73i CD
On 860 D

On Prot. 324 AB

73i BE
At. Eth. 1263 b 2

731 E

732 A
On Charm. 171

DE

Symp. 2o3 A

732 CD

732 E

733 ff-

734 D

Ar. Pol. 1323 b 11

excess or deficiency. A temperate and reverent spirit is a better
inheritance than much gold. And we shall give that to our chil¬
dren not by rebuking them or bidding them respect their elders
but by reverencing the child ourselves. It is not our admoni¬
tions but our example that is effective. It does more harm than
good to be always “shoving our Christian feelings down their
throats.” Above all, we should teach them to be servants of the
laws, and to deal justly with the stranger and suppliant who are
under the protection of heaven. So much of our relations to
others.

In the conduct of our own lives, truth is the leader of all goods
for men and gods. For the truthful man is the trustworthy. Un¬
trustworthy is he who loves voluntary falsehood, while he who
loves the involuntary is the fool. Neither is to be envied. The
faithless man is detected in the end and condemned to a solitary
and joyless old age. Honorable is he who himself does not do
wrong, but thrice honorable is the man who checks the injustice
of others. The rivalries of virtue should be free from envy.

But no soul can maintain the fight against injustice without
a spirit of righteous indignation. Yet remembering that no man
does wrong willingly, we should not abandon ourselves to wom¬
anish waspishness but temper our wrath with gentleness and
wherever possible inflict remedial, not exemplary, punishments.
The source of most evils is self-love in the bad and not in the
good sense of the word. For love is blind. Knowing, so to speak,
nothing, we think we know all, and so not trusting to those who
really know, we inevitably fall into error. It is well to remind
ourselves of even more trifling things. For recollection is the in¬
flow that replaces a continuous outflow of knowledge. We
should abstain from violent laughter and excessive emotion, and
remain calm in prosperity and hopeful in adversity. As these
admonitions are addressed to men, not gods, we must again re¬
cur to the topic of pleasure and pain and insist on the necessity
of inculcating the truth that the righteous life is actually the
most pleasurable in the end and when the account is summed.
All contrary opinions are due to illusions or ignorance. The life
of temperate pleasures and moderate pains is happiest because
it inevitably yields the more favorable balance of pleasure, not
to speak of beauty, right, virtue, and honor.

LAWS

375

The proemium ends. But Plato has still much to say before
discussing the two aspects of a polity: (i) the appointment of
officials and (2) the determination of the laws which they are to
administer. Reverting to ideas and images of the Republic and
the Politicus , he points out that every weaver selects his warp
and woof. Every good artisan cleanses, purifies, and purges his
material before he is willing to deal with it. Every herdsman
purges his flock. The legislator must do the same — more or less
drastically according to his opportunities. This is difficult. But
since the word is easier than the deed, suppose it done. We are,
like the Heraclidae, fortunate in that we start with comparative
equality. Moderation is best. For that, we believe, is indispen¬
sable, and real poverty is not the decrease of wealth but the in¬
crease of appetite. No true statesman will legislate until he has
done away with this main cause of dissension — gross inequali¬
ties of wealth.

What, then, is the right distribution? Let us assume for con¬
creteness a population of 5,040 landholders and defenders of the
distribution. That, because of its many divisions, is a conven¬
ient number. No man of sense will disturb the shrines or sanc¬
tities of tradition, and in all our territorial divisions, precincts
must be assigned to some god, daemon, or hero. Such places of
assembly will serve the sociability and the knowledge of one
another which the citizens of a well-ordered state must have.
The ideal state, or pattern state, if it exists or ever shall exist,
will have all things in common and a spirit of perfect unity.
That is for gods or sons of gods. Ours is a second best. And if it
please God, we shall yet finish a third. One son shall inherit the
home lot and the number of hearths shall not be changed. There
are various devices to secure this result, including finally the
sending-out of colonies. We must try not to hybridize our citi¬
zenship by admitting men of bastard training. But with neces¬
sity even a god cannot contend. The lots shall be accepted on
these and other conditions and recorded in the shrines on cy-
pressial memorials. No citizen shall engage in trade or possess
gold or silver. The coins indispensable for affairs shall be legal
tender at home but worthless abroad. Those who must travel
shall receive an allowance of pan-Hellenic money to be account¬
ed for on their return. There shall be no dowries, no deposits,

734 e

735 A

735 B

735 CD

736 B

Rep. 473 A (Loeb)
Cf. 684 D

737 AB

736 E

Rep. 426-27
(Loeb)

737 E

Ar. Pol. 1265 a
30 ff.

738 B

On Crito 44 B
738 DE

Isoc. Antid. 130
Ar. Pol. 1326 b 16

739 E

740 E

741 A

741 E

742 A

742 B
Cf. 774 C
742 C

WHAT PLATO SAID

Ar. Eth. Nic. 1162
b 30, 1169 b 9

742 DE

Gorg. 515 BC

743 ABC

744 B ff.

745 A
On 741 C

745 B

746 AB
On 739 C

746 C

746 B-747 AB

747 B

747 CD

On 625 D

Book VI
75i

75i P

753 A
753 A

376

no loans at interest. The law will not enforce such contracts.
Wealth and power and virtue are incompatible aims, public or
private. The statesman must choose between them; he cannot
have both, and should not attempt impossibilities. The right
mean in gaining and spending will make men good but never
very rich. Our citizens must not, in their quest for wealth, for¬
get the things for the sake of which wealth is sought. We cannot
have absolute equality since the citizens will bring unequal sums
to the new state. But we will fix as the minimum the value of
the lot with its equipment and as the maximum four times its
value. On this basis we distinguish four classes of citizens and
determine their privileges and duties by the principle of propor¬
tionate equality. There shall be records of all property. The
city shall be at the centre of the territory. The city and the land
shall be divided into twelve portions consecrated to the twelve
gods, and there shall be twelve corresponding tribes, and every
allotment shall have two pieces, one near and one far.

All this we know is a daydream. But that does not lessen its
value as a pattern. The humblest artist should be permitted to
complete his work consistently and then submit it to judgment.
The number 5,040 and its factors will have many uses in the de¬
tail of our institutions and business which it may seem petty to
prescribe. But the mathematical studies that the consideration
of them will impose on the young will greatly profit the mind if
they are not used to foster the huckstering spirit of Phoenicians
and Egyptians. Yet we must not attribute all differences be¬
tween races to legislation and institutions. Climate and the lie
of the land may determine much, and some countries naturally
produce better men than others. And we cannot overlook the
possibility that some regions are divinely favored.

Good laws are futile and ridiculous if the officials who ad¬
minister them are bad. But how secure well-born and well-
trained officials from a rabble of new settlers? Once we have
entered the lists, excuses will not serve. We must finish our fable
and not leave it to wander headless. Sparta and Athens are re¬
mote and disdainful. Cnossus must take charge of the new col¬
ony in no perfunctory manner and appoint nineteen of the colo¬
nists and eighteen of her own citizens to the most important of
all offices, the first board of thirty-seven wardens of the law.

LAWS

377

Later there shall be a complicated and safeguarded method of 753 b
election of this board. But some machinery will be needed to 753E-754AB
start and organize the new government. The beginning is more
than half, proverbially, of the whole. Cnossus, we say again,
must care for the new state and set it on its feet and then leave
it to live and prosper as it may. The Cnossians must select one 754 c
hundred of the settlers and one hundred of themselves as a
board of organization. The law-wardens of whom we spoke
shall hold office not more than twenty years or beyond the age
of seventy. They shall keep the records of the four classes of
property-holders and pass judgment on all citizens who make 754E
false returns, and exercise other functions to be specified in con- 755 a
nection with other laws.

Complicated provisions follow for the election of generals and 755-56
other military officers and of a council of 360. The methods of 756 Bff.
election are devised to secure the just mean between a mo- 756 e
narchical and a democratic government. The equality that dem¬
ocrats praise is an equivocal term. The geometrical and propor- 757 bc
tional equality at which we aim is the judgment of Zeus and
political justice. Yet to avoid faction we must sometimes con¬
cede the use of the arithmetical equality as well as of the so-
called equity which is a modification of strict justice and also
of the principle of the lot. A state like a ship at sea requires un- 758 a
interrupted watchfulness. A twelfth of the guardians must thus 758 b-d
be on guard during each of the twelve months in rotation to
meet all the exigencies of public affairs. There will be many 758-59
minor officials, supervisors, market stewards, priests and priest¬
esses, etc., chosen partly by election and partly by lot, in order
to blend democratic with other principles of government. Del- o5n969IE
phi is to be consulted on all religious matters, and shall co-oper- 759 c
ate in the appointment of a board of interpreters. 759 d

Nothing shall be left unwatched in the city, and the policing 760 ab
of the territory shall be in charge of five land stewards from each
of the twelve divisions. These shall select sixty young men from
each tribe who during their two years of service shall patrol all
divisions of the territory in such wise as to become acquainted
with every part of it at every season of the year. They shall for- 760
tify and embellish the country, conserve its waters and natural 761-62
resources, and, in modern parlance, function as a band of Boy

WHAT PLATO SAID

762

762 BC
762-63

763 B

763-64

764 C

765 B

765 D
Cf. 813 C i

9Si E

765 E

766 A
Polit. 266 A

766 D 3
Eurip. Tro. 1292

766 D

767 A

768 B
763 C

Cf . 956 B ff .

767-69
Cf. 956 B-D

768 E

Infra, pp. 308, 404

769 A

769 A ff.

772 BCD

770 A

At. Eth. Nic. 1180
a 29

378

Scouts. Under the presidency of the five they shall also exercise
judicial functions in minor cases, and like all officials be subject
to an audit. They shall eat at a common mess and be liable to
penalties for absenting themselves by day or night. As servants
of the public they will themselves have no servants, and through
service will learn the first requisite of good citizenship, how to
rule and be ruled. They will eat plain food, coarse and un¬
cooked, and harden themselves by hunting. There is no more
important branch of learning than the knowledge of their own
country that they will thus acquire.

Provision is next made for the election of market and city
stewards and their duties and limited judicial authority. There
will be two kinds of officials for music and gymnastics, officers of
education and those who control competitive games. A choir
manager shall be elected under supervision of the law-wardens
from experts in the subject. The most important official of all is
the general superintendent of education. For the first shoot of
every growth is most decisive of its final development. Man,
though naturally a tame animal, and if rightly educated the
most divine, becomes when wrongly nurtured the most savage
creature on earth. A city that lacks proper courts is no city, and
competent judges or jurymen ought to have more to say in a
trial than the litigants. Every official has some judicial func¬
tions and every judge or juryman is in a sense an official, and the
man who is excluded from jury service does not feel himself a
citizen. The details will be given later. We must distinguish
public and private suits, and three grades of courts — the arbi¬
tration of neighbors, tribal courts, and courts of appeal — and
prescribe the personnel and procedure of each. This will suffice
as a provisional and perhaps fairly consistent sketch.

Before our old men’s game passes on to the second branch of
legislation, the laws proper, we may remind ourselves that every
artist needs to provide for the future upkeep, revision, and cor¬
rection of his work, and that our structure of the laws omits de¬
tails which future experience must supply. The experimental
period may be set dov/n as ten years; thereafter the constitution
shall be changed only by general consent. We who are at the
sunset of life must try to educate the younger generation to be¬
come legislators. And we exhort them never to forget that the

LAWS

379

true aim of legislation is the virtue of the citizens and the good
of the whole, and that all laws must be judged by this test and
all life directed to this end.

We start again with the number 5,040, its convenience, and
the consecration of its factors by their reference to the division
of the territory, the seasonal festivals and the worship of the
gods. Beginning, as is natural, with marriage, we may repeat
and supplement our former specimen law. The right marriage
is that which benefits the state. Men should not marry for
wealth, but to reduce inequalities and harmonize the opposition
of the two temperaments. The quick and lively, the sluggish
and stable, should mate not with their likes but with their
opposites. Thus will the maddening wine of life be chastened by
another temperate deity. Our law of marriage and its hortatory
proemium repeat and supplement what has been already said.
Marriage feasts should be moderate and the guests limited to a
few friends and kinsfolk. Those who are contemplating so seri¬
ous a change of life and the begetting of offspring should not
drink much wine. The beginning in all things is (as) God. The
married son must leave his parents and, establishing a separate
home in one of the two houses of the lot, there beget and rear
children and hand on the torch of life.

Among our possessions servants or slaves present a vexed
problem, as is apparent from the experience of the Spartans
with their Helots and the Thessalians with their Penestae and
other instances. It is easy to cite examples of good and bad
slaves and to quote Homer’s saying that then Zeus deprives a
man of half his virtue when he becomes a slave. When possible
slaves should be of different races. And there is no surer test of
the sincerity of a man’s justice than fair treatment of his slaves
and of all inferiors. We should not spoil them and make life hard¬
er for them and us by jesting with either male or female slaves.
We should speak to them only in commands and not admonish
them like freemen.

The next point is the building of houses, which in practice
will have to precede marriage. There will be a market-place and
civic centre and temples there and on suitable elevations round
the city. Walls and fortifications we will by Spartan example
leave to sleep in the earth. Reliance on such defenses breeds

On 693 C

770 D-771 A

771

Cf. 721
773 B

773 D

773-74

721

775 AB

775 C

674 B

776 B

776 CD

777 BC

776 DE

777 A

Od. XVII. 322
777 DE

Rep. 554 CD

778 B
778 CD

WHAT PLATO SAID

778 DE
779 B

779 C
844 A, 763 CD

On Cratyl. 425 D

780 C

781 A

Cf. 637 B
806 AB

781 B
781 DE

733 B

781-82
Rep. 499 C

676 A ff.

Tim. 77 AB

782 E

784 C
784 D
784 E-785 A

On 741 C

380

cowards and sluggards. The walls of the city should be bronze
and iron. But we may compromise by building our houses in
such a way that their backs will form a continuous wall around
the city. Officials and inspectors will supervise these matters
and regulate the flow of rain water and other details.

Before passing to the topics of gestation, infancy, and educa¬
tion, Plato again pauses to laugh at himself, and admit that his
proposals are utopian. If public life is to be orderly, private life
must be regulated. The public mess of the Spartans and Cre¬
tans, to whatever historical accident it owes its origin, was
once a paradox. Now it would seem less so. But the Athenian
shrinks from an extension of it, which he declares necessary if
the work of legislative reform is not to be as vain as the pro¬
verbial carding of wool into the fire. Married people, too, must
eat at the public mess, and the stealthy and secretive race of
women must be forced for all their recalcitrance to face the light.
Sparta herself is an example of the evils that flow from letting
the women get out of hand. Women are half the state and the
hardest half to control. At any rate, we have leisure to examine
in the light of first principles the theoretical necessity of our
plan. When we have considered the procreation, nurture, and
education of children, its justification may be more apparent.
Let us recall what we said of the infinity of time, the antiquity
of man, and the endless changes that have taken place in foods
and drinks and animal and plant life and in human institutions
from the one extreme of cannibalism to the other of Orphic vege¬
tarianism. All human actions flow from three needs or appe¬
tites, on the right or wrong regulation of which everything de¬
pends — the desire of food and drink and later of sexual satisfac¬
tion. These (when undisciplined) morbid appetites we wish to
direct by fear, law, and true reason toward the good instead of
what men call the pleasurable.

On these generalities follow detailed regulations for the sur¬
veillance of young brides and bridegrooms for the first ten years
of marriage by women inspectors and other officials. Those
whom the law-wardens pronounce incorrigible shall be “posted”
and suffer various dishonoring disqualifications. When the legal
age limit of procreation is past, sexual conduct shall be left to
the individual provided decency and moderation are observed.
Birth records shall be kept in every phratry.

LAWS

381

We cannot omit education, and we have already pointed out 7881™
that it is impossible to leave private life unregulated. But much
that we have to say belongs to admonition rather than to posi¬
tive law, and too many and minute regulations would bring law
itself into contempt. The aim of right education is to bring ReP.4i6c
about the best condition of mind and body. The first growth of on 765 e
every creature is the greatest. And many have contended that yss d
men grow to more than half their height in the first five years of
life. This rapid growth and influx, if unaccompanied by exer¬
cise, is the source of many evils. So true is this that you may see ^bc8
even old men at Athens taking long walks not for their own
health but to keep up the fighting edge of the “birds” that they
carry under their arms. This trivial illustration shows that agi¬
tations and movements which do not fatigue are a healthful ex- 789 cd
ercise which helps the organism to master and digest its food.

Yet we should only expose ourselves to laughter if we prescribed 790 a
long walks for pregnant mothers and enacted that infants should
be carried from place to place and not use their own legs till they
were strong enough to bear them without injury. The servile
and womanish natures of the nurses would not obey. If we men¬
tion such things, it is from the hope of convincing the thoughtful
and so in time influencing practice and law. We may take it as
an elementary principle that the continued motion is salutary
to the bodies and minds of the young and especially of infants.

An analogy of experience confirms this. TheexcitementofCory- 790 de
bantism is cured by other excitements, and it is not quiet but
motion and singing that mothers use to lull sleepless children to
rest. The reason is plain. These morbid agitations and alarms 790-91
are internal motions which the application of external move¬
ments reduces and calms.

From these illustrations we may infer the unwisdom of sub¬
jecting young souls to fears and other harmful emotions. Pee¬
vishness is a serious fault of character. The habits of infancy 793 e
may determine the character for life. It is a bad thing to accus¬
tom babes to signifying their desires by ill-omened weepings and 792 a
clamors. We are not to avert their weeping by giving them as 792 bc
much pleasure as possible. We wish to “condition” them to
cheerfulness and calm. He who seeks pleasure cannot escape
pain, and the middle or neutral state which we attribute to the 793 a
gods'isbest. All this and much more to come belongs to unwrit-

382

WHAT PLATO SAID

ten law and custom. It is not, properly speaking, law, but is no

793 c less important for all that. Unless the foundation is securely

laid in habit and custom, the superstructure will topple down.
And thus the discussion of these apparent trivialities may make
On Poiit. 286 b our laws seem prolix.

793 E-794 a After infancy, from three to six, children will be encouraged
to play games, many of which they spontaneously invent. There
will be need of supervision and sometimes of punishments,
which, as in the case of slaves, should not be degrading. At the

794 c age of six the boys and girls will be separated, but both will be

taught physical exercises and the use of arms. They should be
794-95 accustomed to use the left hand as well as the right. It is quite
795 bc feasible, as many examples prove. We want no lame and one-

795 d sided education. We may distinguish gymnastics for the body

and music for the soul, and with the enumeration of different
types of dances conclude the postponed topic of gymnastics.

796 e Turning again to music, which we mistakenly supposed we
cf. 673 b had done with, we repeat the paradox that the regulation of chil¬
dren’s games is all important because it is from them that the

Rep. 424 e~42^a spirit of innovation spreads to the entire life of the state. Change

797 d — except of evil things — is always perilous and to be deprecated,

and there is nothing more mischievous than the habit of dis-
0n797-98 paraging antiquity as old-fashioned. Habit is all powerful, as
the relation of diet to health shows, and the habit of innovation
656 d in children’s games is no trifle. One way to check it is the Egyp¬
tian device of consecrating the types of song and dance, and
prosecuting for impiety all would-be innovators.

799 cd Yet ere we decide so great a question, let us pause and reflect
799 e as men in doubt halt, as it were, at the crossways of thought. Or

perhaps our entire exposition if we go on to its conclusion will
confirm our assumptions. Assume, then, that our songs are real¬
ly laws or nomoi as some kinds of music were named in older

800 bc usage, perhaps by a fortunate divination of the truth. How shall
on 790 a such a decree escape ridicule? Perhaps by the consideration of

three typical examples. We would not allow at a sacrifice a by-
800 de stander to blaspheme with ill-omened words. Yet that is pre¬
cisely what the tragedians and others do when they chant their
dolorous strains at sacred festivals. Our first canon, then, is that
801 a all song must be auspicious; second, we say that it is to be pray-

LAWS

3^3

er; and our third rule is that prayer is petition, and petition is
unsafe unless the petitioner knows what is good. The poet clear¬
ly does not know what is good, so his petitions must be ap¬
proved by the judges appointed by the state and the wardens of
the laws. We are now justified in promulgating the law that
after hymns and the praise of the gods poets may praise good
and law-abiding citizens, men and women, whose course is run —
it is not safe to praise the living. There is much good ancient
music and poetry to select from, and our judges may make use
of experts without yielding to their personal tastes. They will
not need to serve up the honeyed Muse to the people. We like
what we are accustomed to, and so the wholesome art which the
modernist thinks cold gives as much pleasure as the other kind,
and its benefit is so much clear gain. The legislator will distin¬
guish the music that is appropriate to males and females, and
will not permit any incongruity between the harmonies or the
rhythms and the words.

The next point is the teaching of these things. I am, as it
were, a shipwright laying down the keels of character for the
voyage of life. There is nothing in the life of man worth taking
seriously, yet serious we must be. That is our hard condition.
God only is worth our serious concern. The best that can be
said of man is that he is a plaything and puppet of God, who
may sometimes win a glimpse of truth. Let us play, then, as
nobly as we may and sing and dance our way through life to
please the gods. Men mistakenly say that the serious business of
war is for the sake of peace. There is no true play or education
in war. But the right conduct of the plays of peace will help us
to gain the favor of heaven and win our wars. We have out¬
lined the right conduct, and for the rest may say to our nurslings
what Homer’s Athene says to Telemachus:

Some things thine own wit shall devise and find

And heaven will put others in thy mind.

To return: We repeat that public provision must be made
and foreign teachers employed for training in all forms of ath¬
letics and military exercises, and that this education must be
compulsory for women as well as men. Mythical and historical
examples prove that the training of women in the use of arms is

On 687 E
801 BC

801 E 1
Rep. 612 B 7

802 A 8
Rep. 607 A

802 B
On 957 AB
802 C

Rep. 607 A 5

802 D
802 DE

803 A

803 B

803 C

804 B

On 644 DE

803 E

Phaedr. 273 E 7
803 DE

804 A 4
Rep. 520 D 6
Polit. 272 B 8

804 C

Rep. 450-57
804 E

WHAT PLATO SAID

384

80s a possible. To leave the lives of women unregulated is to neglect
on 781 b half the state. If our proposal is utopian, let us work it out and
on 746 c then judge it. Since our plan is possible, the objector is bound
to say which of the present ways of dealing with women he pre¬
fers to ours: the Thracian that makes them slaves and tillers of
the soil, the Athenian that shuts them up in the gynaeceum , or
the Spartan compromise that leaves them still helpless to defend
the state in time of need, and while regulating the life of men
abandons women to license and disorder.

807 a What now will be the way of life of our citizens? They are re¬
lieved ofall ordinary cares, but aresurelynot to fatten in idleness
like beasts. If they did, they would fall a prey to hardier beasts.

807 cd The care of their own souls and bodies will occupy their leisure
Rep. 465 D(Loeb> more fully than the training of an Olympian or Pythian victor.

807 e Every hour must have its prescribed task, though the legislator
on 769 d cannot enter into these details. They must be the first to rise

808 a and the last to sleep in the household, and transact much busi-
xen. occon. xu. ness njg]-,t. He who sleeps is as useless as a corpse, and a little

808 b sleep is all that health requires. At dawn the children must be

808 cd off to their teachers. They are creatures that cannot do without
on 766 a a herdsman. The child is of all wild things the most unmanage¬
able, the most cunning and insolent. For it possesses a fountain
of intelligence not yet under control, and needs many tutors and

808 e much discipline to curb it. Any freeman may punish a child

809 a who does wrong and his tutor, and the law-warden appointed to

have charge of children shall take note of the freeman who neg-

809 lects this duty. But what is the education of the law-wardens
and of good citizens generally? We have spoken of the liter¬
ature of choric song. But what of prose literature, arith-

810 metic, and the use of the lyre ? The years from ten to six¬
teen shall be devoted to these studies, three years to “letters,”
and three years to the lyre and its accompaniments; and there
shall be no forcing of dull students beyond their natural rate of
progress.

But again what of prose literature and of verse not set to

810 e music? We have agreed not to flinch from paradox. The pres-
Prot. 325 e” ent practice of memorizing such literature indiscriminately re-
ion 530 c suits in a dangerous smattering which might be described as the
polymathy condemned by Heraclitus or the humanization of

LAWS

385

culture. If we are to discriminate, we need a pattern for the
things that children may be safely taught. And what better
guide can we find for our censors than the substance of our con¬
versation thus far? It is hard to dogmatize about matters of
such moment. But we are at least consistent and may leave the
final decision to the conclusion of the whole. In the teaching of
the lyre, simplicity should be the rule. The young have much to
learn and should not be disconcerted by difficulties and the com¬
plication of rhythmical variations and possible contradiction be¬
tween the music and the feelings. Everything depends on edu¬
cation. The director of the children will have expert assistants
to aid him in his supervision of all forms of musical and gym¬
nastic education and in the training of women as well as men
for war, especially wrestling. We may (as in the Republic) classi¬
fy and subdivide the motions of athletics, dance, and song as
peaceful or warlike, and as imitation of noble or base characters.
Some of the names given by the ancients to dances of these
different types are very apt and happy. The imitation of the
base is comedy. Freemen must witness this, since the knowledge
of opposites is one; but the practice must be left to slaves and
foreigners. Here novelty is not only permitted but prescribed.
But what of the “serious” poets of the tragedies? Shall we allow
them to “fetch and carry” their poesy in our city ? We ourselves
are the composers of a nobler tragedy and can suffer no rivals.
We cannot permit them to set up their stages in our public
places and hire eloquent and dulcet voices to teach women and
children and the mob the contrary of all that our education in¬
culcates. They must submit to our censure if we are to grant
them a chorus.

Arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy remain. We shall speak
in the proper place of a higher education in these subjects. Here
we are speaking only of what is indispensable for all citizens,
“necessary” in the true sense of the word. He who has no knowl¬
edge of these is hardly a human being at all, still less can he be
competent to take charge of men. In this sense they are surely
necessary. Yet it is difficult to speak discriminatingly of them
because of the total ignorance of them in some parts of Greece,
and the still greater mischief of the combination of survey
courses with bad teaching in more sophisticated communities.

8nB

811 c

On 858 C

812 A
Cf. 768 E

Cf. 806 CD
On 746 C

813 D
813 C

813-14
804 DE
814 CD
399 A ff.
401 D ff.

816 B
816 D

Phileb. 49 BC
Ar. Poet. 1449 a
33

816 E

On 797 D

Ar. Clouds 546-48

817 B

817 CD
Gorg. 502 C

Rep. 383 C

817 E

818 A

Cf. 961 ff.
818 B
818 CD

818 E

819 A

3 86

WHAT PLATO SAID

819 A-C

Rep. 522 E 4
819 D
Rep. 535 E 5

819 E

820 A
820 EC

820 D
820 DE

821 A

821 CD

821 E
822 AB

822 D-824 B

824 BC

Book VIII

828 ff.

829 A

830 BC
820 B
830 DE
829-30
Cf. on 832 E

831 C

831-32 ff.

832 C

832 E

Free-born Greeks ought certainly to learn as much of numbers
and their useful application as mobs of Egyptian children learn
by ingeniously devised games. Our present ignorance is not hu¬
man but swinish. We know lines, surfaces, and solids, but we
do not know that some of them are commensurable and some
incommensurable with one another. These and similar matters
are little things to know but big things not to know. We do not
believe that the teaching of them can harm the young. But we
are willing to listen to argument. Meanwhile we adopt them
provisionally. The popular notion that the study of nature and
astronomy is actually impious is the reverse of the truth. We
should at least learn enough not to blaspheme about these great
divinities, the sun, the moon, and the stars which we erroneous¬
ly call planets because we suppose them to wander in their
course. They do not wander, as I myself have only recently
learned and could easily explain. We should not please the rac¬
ers at Olympia if we called the quickest the slowest and vice
versa. And we should at least learn enough not to make this
absurd mistake about the gods.

There remains to complete the topic of education the praise
and blame of hunting and its right uses, and some details which
should be rather exhortations than positive laws. A brief state¬
ment of the law concludes the subject.

The eighth book of the Laws begins with religious festivals in
a state which possesses more leisure than any other and is to
lead the good life like a single man, neither wronging others nor
submitting to wrong. Then it discusses the modern topic of pre¬
paredness for war in peace, and monthly manoeuvres. All festi¬
vals and competitions should be directed to this end, and par¬
ticipants who distinguish themselves will receive prizes and be
praised in poems which are to be composed by good men only,
even if the gods have not made them poetical. The chief cause
of the neglect of such practices in present-day states is the fierce
pursuit of wealth which leaves no leisure for them. The lust for
wealth is the cause of many evils already described in the Re¬
public . And it is this that makes our governments no true poli¬
ties but the rule of factions.

On this digression follow the details of agonistic as distin¬
guished from educational gymnastics. They are to be so ordered

LAWS

387

as to prepare the citizen for the real contests of war. The former
account of education in music is supplemented by provisions for
the contests of rhapsodes and choruses. The association of the
young in such festivals and choruses supplies a transition to the
difficult problem of sex and the regulation of the mightiest of
human appetites. Plato's final opinions on these questions are
identical with what are or until a few years ago were the judg¬
ments of the modern Christian conscience. He rejects unnatu¬
ral lusts, using the word “natural.” He has great faith in the re¬
straining power of uncontradicted teaching, unanimous public
opinion, and verbal taboos, and in the diversion of the “libido”
by physical training as exemplified in the case of some famous
athletes; and he clears up by lucid distinctions many of the ap¬
parent contradictions and confusions of the dramatic dialogues.

The Cretan interlocutor is represented as provisionally acqui¬
escing in these views, and they pass on to the food supply and
agricultural laws. There will be no imports of food. Boundaries
shall be sacrosanct, under protection of Zeus the boundary god.
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, the little
stone that severs friendship from hate. Then follow warnings
against many minor injuries and encroachments, with provision
for legal remedies if they are disregarded. For the regulation of
the water supply there are many good old laws which we need
not divert into other channels. Some details, however, are giv¬
en. There must be laws also for the first harvest of figs and
grapes, and the eating of wayside fruit by the passing traveler,
and the transportation of the crop across another's land. No
citizen shall practice any craft and no foreigner two crafts. The
workman must be one man, not many. Neither exports nor im¬
ports shall be taxed. Imports shall be limited to necessities
which the country does not produce. The entire food supply
shall be divided into twelve parts, and each twelfth apportioned
to citizens, slaves, foreigners, and craftsmen in three subdivi¬
sions. Citizens shall distribute the portion of the slaves. There
shall be twelve villages, one in the middle of each district, with
civic centres, temples, and regulated construction, and the
craftsmen shall be suitably distributed in the villages and the
city. Market stewards shall enforce our rules for business, and
the sale of food to foreigners. All sales shall be for cash. Aliens

834 E-835

835-36 ff.
835 de

836 c
840 DE

838 D

838 BC

839 E-840 A
841 A

837 A ff.

842 A
842 C
Cf. 847 BC

842 E

Deut. 19:14

843 A
843 B

On 957 AB

844 BCD

845 DE

844 D

846 A

On Charm. 161 E

847 AB
Cf. 842 C
847 BC

847 E

848 BC
848 CD

849 E
Cf. 915 DE

388

WHAT PLATO SAID

850 B

Book IX
Cf. 761 E, 764
BC, 767 A

853 C

854 BC

857 AB

857 C-864 C

857 CD
Cf. 720 A ff.

857 E

858 A
On 781 DE

858 B

859 C

Ar Eth. Nic. 1180
b 29
858 C
858 E

859 AB

859 E-860 AB
On Gorg. 476 CD

860 D
860 E

860 E-861

shall be registered, and their residence normally limited to twen¬
ty years. They shall pay no tax except sobriety and modesty.

In the ninth book Plato takes up judicial procedure, to which
hitherto there have been only incidental references, and espe¬
cially crime and punishment, which have not been considered at
all. As legislator for a reformed state he shrinks from this repug¬
nant topic, but since we are legislating for men, not gods — and
in view of the presence of aliens and the weakness of human na¬
ture — he cannot neglect it. The details of Plato's adoption of
and variations from Athenian law have been studied in technical
monographs. Plere we are concerned with ideas and principles.
The law against sacrilege and temple-robbing is prefaced by a
particularly solemn brief proem or chant, which is much quoted
in later antiquity. The complications of the procedure we may
omit. Next come the penalties for treason and attempts to sub¬
vert the polity, which resemble those for sacrilege. They shall
in no case work corruption of blood. The incidental remark that
the penalties for theft shall be the same whether the sum stolen
be large or small introduces a rambling digression on underlying
ethical principles and on the compatibility of necessary legal
distinctions with some of the Socratic paradoxes of the earlier
dialogues which Plato still affirms.

The distinction between the two types of physicians is re¬
called. We are educating rather than actually legislating. There
is no compulsion of haste upon us as on a lawyer in court. We
have leisure to elaborate the ideally best if we please instead of
limiting ourselves to the necessary, and, like careful workmen,
to collect our materials before proceeding to build. We are be¬
coming, but are not yet lawgivers. Laws are a form of literature.
It is more disgraceful for lawgivers to err and mislead than for
poets. They should explain their meanings like a kindly parent
and not write their decrees on the wall like a tyrant.

Popular usage would say to punish justly is beautiful, but to
be punished is disgraceful. But we who affirm the identity of the
just and beautiful must in consistency pronounce both beautiful
or fine. Again, we have always maintained that all bad men are
unwillingly bad, and we do not admit the contentious subtlety
that though they are unwillingly unjust they commit injustice
willingly. How shall we reconcile these ethical principles with

LAWS

339

the indispensable legal distinction between voluntary and in¬
voluntary acts of injustice? If the distinction is not what it is
usually supposed to be, what is it? Plato meets the difficulty by
distinguishing the harm or loss caused by an act from its moral
quality. The law must require the doer to make good the loss.
The moral quality, the “injustice,” is a state of mind, and is
determined by the purpose and intention of the doer. Injustice
when curable is a disease to be treated by remedial punishment;
when it is incurable the punishment is exemplary. To make the
matter still plainer Plato recurs to his psychology. We may dis¬
tinguish in the soul, it matters not whether we call them parts
or functions, three qualities: the contentious and ambitious
“spirit,” the desire of pleasure, and ignorance, which is twofold
according as it is or is not accompanied by conceit of knowledge.
The domination of passion and appetite is injustice. The con¬
trol of what the agent believes (rightly or wrongly that is) to be
the best is our definition of justice. We are not disputing about
words. There are some five specific distinctions to which legisla¬
tion must adjust its penalties. Misdeeds may be due to passion,
appetite, or ignorance, which is of two or three kinds. And these
five species are further distinguished by two types or genera —
the violent and the stealthy.

These principles settled, we return to the detail of legislation.
The law of homicide and murder is treated in the solemn style
of Aeschylus’ Choephoroi and Eumenides and the orations of
Antiphon. Some of the antiquarian procedures of the Athenian
courts are retained. And Plato is not unwilling to invoke the
sanctions of archaic religious feeling or popular superstition.
Let the involuntary homicide go into exile for a year, not dis¬
daining the ancient tale that the wrathful spirit of the slain
man returns to haunt his home and has for his ally the memory
of his slayer quickened by the associations of the seasons as they
roll around.

Homicides of passion hold an intermediate place between the
voluntary and the involuntary. If done on the spur of the mo¬
ment, they resemble the involuntary and deserve lighter penal¬
ties; if of malice prepense, they are the “likeness” of the volun¬
tary and should be punished more severely. Special provisions
are made for the slaying of a child by a parent, a husband or

861 CD

On Prot. 353 A

862 B
862 D

On Prot. 324 AI3

862 E

On Phaedo 113 E

863 A
863 BC

On Lysis 218 AB

On Meno 87 BC

865 DE

Aesch. Choeph.
324 ff.

867

868 C ff.

39°

WHAT PLATO SAID

ct. Is?a wife by the partner. One who kills a parent may be acquitted
PhEur° HippoL by the parent before he dies, but otherwise receives the ex-
1449-50 tremest penalties of the laws. Next come murders and other
crimes due to the appetite for pleasure and envy; the chief cause
On 831 c ff. of this is the lust for wealth, which Plato again denounces.
Other causes are ambition and fear.

870 de By way of prelude we may recall our former preamble and the

On 86s de teaching of the mysteries which many believe, that such crimes
are punished in Hades or are expiated by similar sufferings in a
On phaedo 81 e second life on earth. The possibility of the murder of kin is
cf. I53 b again deprecated but recognized. The cowardly suicide shall be
873 cd buried apart and without headstone. Animals and lifeless things

873 e that kill may be tried — on the old English principle of deodand.
soph. o.T.8J36ff. There shall be public outlawing of the unknown killer.

874 e The preamble to the topic of crimes of violence repeats some
cf. 866-67 ideas already developed in the Laws or the Politicus. The psy¬
chological classification of homicides applies to them. Laws are

On Euthyd, 291 b indispensable. It is hard for man to perceive that the true po-

875 a litical art is concerned for the common, not the private, weal.

And even if a man grasp this truth, he will not abide by it when
cf. on 691 cd possessed of irresponsible power. But human nature senselessly
Tim. 69 D 2 pursuing pleasure and fleeing pain will impel him to greed and
On Meno 99 e self-seeking. If by grace divine a true king should arise, he
would need no laws to control him; for no law is superior to
On 73S9E knowledge. As it is, we must put up with the second best, laws,
the generality of which cannot always do justice to particular
87s de cases. Those considerations apply with special force to the in-

876A finite diversity of crimes of violence. We must leave the issue of

876 b fact to the courts and with it in many cases the penalty. A leg-
On 766 d islator unfortunately compelled to legislate for dumb and secre¬
tive or tumultuous and democratic courts should leave them as
little discretion as possible. Good or ideal courts may be trusted

876E to determine the penalties themselves. Here, as heretofore, we
on 769 d need supply only a few guiding examples. There follow the pen-

877 a alties for assault with intent to kill and for wounds and blows

inflicted on kin. The classification of crimes of violence resem-

879 b bles that of homicides. Solemn emphasis is laid on the reverence

879 c due to age. A young man should patiently endure the blows of
Ar' P° 38-40 b an old man, thus storing up honor for his own old age. To strike

LAWS

391

a parent is hardly less abhorrent than to slay him. Those whose
unyielding spirits cannot be softened by the instruction and ad¬
monition of the preamble shall suffer the severest penalties of
outlawing, exile, or stripes, and condign punishment shall be
visited upon any bystander who fails to come to the aid of a
parent thus assaulted.

The tenth book of the Laws is the earliest, the most influen¬
tial, and, a Platonist would say, still the best extant theodicy or
treatise on natural religion. It anticipates everything essential
that has been said on this theme by the Stoics, Cicero, Plutarch,
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Raimond de Sabond, Herbert of
Cherbury, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Pope’s Essay on Man , Joseph
de Maistre, Tennyson’s In Memoriam , Tayler Lewis’ Plato
Against the Atheists , Martineau, and their successors down to
the present day.

Its substance is familiar to many who have never opened a
volume of Plato’s works. For it has been and still is endlessly
imitated, plagiarized, excerpted, paraphrased, and commented.
It will always remain a fundamental text for the study of Plato’s
philosophy and religion. Plere it will be enough to indicate its
place in the economy of the Laws, to enumerate some of its
dominant ideas, and to warn against some prevalent misappre¬
hensions.

It is obviously a digression, and it could be argued that its
disproportionate length, for which Plato apologizes, is evidence
of senility or interpolation; or its artistic justification might be
found in the fact that it relieves the otherwise intolerable aridity
of legal detail in Books IX, XI, and XII. In any case it contains
much that it was in Plato’s heart to say, and the Laws is pro¬
fessedly a rambling and leisurely composition.

It is introduced as a preamble to a more specific law against
sacrilege and impiety than the previous summary disposal of the
matter, and might be conceived as a belated preamble to the
entire work. It enumerates three possible heresies: atheism, the
belief that the gods are careless of mankind, or that they can be
bribed. Its inclusion of impiety in word gives bitter offense to
modern liberals, and their indignation at a few petulant and
perhaps not entirely serious pages at the end completely blinds
them to the merits of the composition as a whole — its wealth of

88o-8l

83l-82

Cf. 853 D
Soph. O.T. 356

On 857 C

887 B 4
857-58

On Poiit. 286 B

887 B

890 E
885 B

884 A 7 ff.

799 B 8

854 AB, 868 D,
871 D

885 B

888 C

885 B 6, 907 E 1,
908 C 7

Cic. Nat. deor. I.
23

392

WHAT PLATO SAID

886 AB
908 B
885 B

Cic. Nat. deor. I.

23

886 A

886 DE
967 C 4
Apol. 26 D
886 E 1-2

890 B 1-2

889 B, 891 C 3

892 C 2

889 E
Gorg. 483-84
491 E 6 ff.
Rep. 365 D
638 AB, 690 B
5-8, 715 A

890 A

887 CDE, 870 D

907 C
888 A 7

thought, the beauty of its religious and biblical eloquence.
Grote and Gomperz, for example, summarize it without one
word of appreciation of these qualities; and many critics of this
school take no note of Plato’s explicit rejection of the invidious
modern argument that lack of faith in the fundamentals of re¬
ligion is always due to corruption of the moral will. Plato does,
however, say that no one who (really) holds that faith will be
impious in word or deed. The paradox, if it be one, is of the same
character as his continued affirmation of the Socratic principle
that no one who knows the right will do wrong. It depends upon
the psychology of our definition of knowing and believing.
More than half of the book is devoted to the proof in refutation
of all militant and materialistic atheisms that the very nature
of the world is evidence of the primacy of soul.

The Athenian does not consider the argument from design, or
the argument from universal belief, a sufficient refutation of
philosophic atheists. Their position is that of their successors
today, who affirm that “in the beginning was hydrogen” and
that “the kinetic theory of gas is an assertion of ultimate chaos.”
The sun, the moon, the stars, they say, are lifeless earth and
stone. They cook up this materialism in plausible arguments
for the corruption of youth. There are, they say, three sources
of things: chance, nature, and art. The elements — earth, fire,
water, and air — exist by nature and chance. They constitute
nature, in fact. In like manner animals, plants, the heavens,
and the earth, they say, are the products of nature and chance,
but not of art, which is an after-growth superadded to them.
Among the late developed arts which do not exist by nature is
the political art of justice, whose assumptions have no validity.
Injustice and grasping selfishness are the laws of nature, they
say; natural right is the right of the stronger; justice, self-re¬
straint, and the belief in gods who punish are a device of the
legislator to hold the mob in awe. It is hard, the Athenian says,
to deal patiently with men who scornfully reject all the tales of
their childhood and remain unimpressed by all the habits and
ceremonies of the religion in which they have been nurtured.
And the sincere theist is further irritated by their confident dog¬
matism about what they cannot possibly know or prove. Boy,
thou art young, the Athenian apostrophizes a youth of this

LAWS

393

type. You and your mates are not the first and will not be the
last to say in your hearts, “There is no God.” But this much
we may affirm, that no man ever did consistently maintain this
absolute atheism from youth to old age and die in it. Neverthe¬
less, since such sayings and the wide dispersion of such literature
are a great corruption of youth in our cities and even a little
plausibility in their refutation may serve the lawgiver’s end, we
must come to the rescue and refute this heresy as well as the
other two by proving that law and art, the products of mind and
right reason, exist by nature or something not inferior to nature.

The argument employed by the Athenian against these opposi¬
tions of science is the argument of the Phaedrus that the soul is
the self-moving and therefore takes precedence of that which
is moved by another. These philosophers have ignored the soul.
Whatever classification of motions we adopt and with whatever
state of things we begin, a first principle of motion is an indis¬
pensable postulate. If all things are assumed to be in motion,
this motion must proceed from a self-moved. And if we assume
that all things were once together and at rest, a self-moved was
required to start them. We may distinguish in every matter
three things: the name, the logos or verbal description and defi¬
nition, and the essence. The motion that moves itself is the
logos and essence of soul. The soul, therefore, exists by nature
as truly or more so than mere lifeless clods and their elements —
earth, water, fire, and air. And therefore, concludes the Athe¬
nian, the properties of soul take precedence of the properties of
body. Reason, forethought, care, exist by nature and are prior
to heavy, light, moist and dry, and all the qualities that reason
makes use of for its purposes. Furthermore, there must be more
than one soul — two, at least, to account for good and evil. Now
the visible cosmos, the starry heavens, and their movements,
being orderly, are regulated by the good type of soul. It would
be impious to affirm the contrary. We see the body of the sun
but cannot see its soul. We dare not look directly at the sun and
may not hope to contemplate the supreme reason directly with
mortal eyes. But we may infer that the beautiful consistent
movements of the sun, for example, must be produced by a soul,
whether indwelling or acting from without or embodied in some
visible Apollo who guides it as a charioteer his chariot. Unless

903 B 4, 904 E s
888 B

888 BC

885 D 6, 886 B
10, 810 BC
858 D If., 891 B 2

890 D 2

907 C 5, 718 D

891 A 6

Rep. 368 B 4-7

890 D 6

245-46

892 A 2
Epin. 983 CD

893-94

895 A 2, B 3

896 B 1

Phaedr. 245 C 9

894 B 9

895 B
895 D

896 A

897 A, 892 B

896 D

Symp. 186 D 7

897 B 1

Tim. 46 C 7-8
896 E

897 BC

898 C 6
Tim. 29 A 4

898 D 9
897 D 8-10
Phaedo 99 D

899 A

394

WHAT PLATO SAID

8q9 C

On Gorg. 508 AB

899 B 8
Rep. 529 C 7
Tim. 40 A

899 B 9, 908 C 2
Epin. 991 D

Nat. Deor. 3. 20

On Crito 44 B

Eccles., Sonnet
XXV II

he can refute this argument, the atheist is silenced. And similar¬
ly of the stars, the moon, and the orderly process of the seasons.
Since soul must be their cause, and good souls, we may properly
speak of them as gods. And whether we regard them as em¬
bodied living adornments of the spangled sky or in whatever
way we conceive them, we cannot fail to repeat (after Thales)
that all things are full of gods. This is perhaps the most misin¬
terpreted passage in Plato. The literal-minded see in it the
equivalent of a piece of Stoic pedantry recorded by Cicero. Ma¬
terialists are displeased by the unctuous Ruskinian rhetoric that
adapts to Plato's own purposes an ambiguous utterance doubt¬
fully attributed to Thales. Nearly all critics find in it confirma¬
tion of Plato's supposed lapses into superstition. It can be un¬
derstood only as the conscious concession to inevitable and
harmless popular superstition of Plato’s poetic Ruskinian,
Wordsworthian, Emersonian moods. Plato, as we have seen,
does not believe that it is possible to make the masses complete¬
ly rational. Like Emerson, he does not object to anthropo¬
morphism absolutely, but only to the immoral implications of
some forms of anthropomorphic superstition. But to borrow the
words of Bacon, which Wordsworth also would have approved,
he had rather the people should believe all the fables of the
Talmud than that this universal frame is without a mind. This
is the clue to the interpretation not only of the Laws but of
every passage in the Platonic writings in which literal-minded
critics have found superstition. Plato's feeling can be best ap¬
preciated by thinking of such things as Aubrey de Vere's son¬
net,

I saw the master of the sun, he stood,
or Wordsworth's

Nor scorn the aid which Fancy oft doth lend

The soul’s eternal interests to promote,

or Keat’s description in Hyperion of the young god of the seas,
or Renan's prayer to Athene on the Acropolis, or Swinburne's
Hymn to Apollo , or Henry Adams' prayer to the Virgin Mary, or
Ruskin's interpretation of Diana in Modern Painters:

And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods it does not
mean merely as Wordsworth puts it, that the poet or the shepherd saw the

LAWS

395

moon and stars glancing between the branches of the trees and wished to say
so figuratively, it means that there is a living spirit to which the light of the
moon is a body .... and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect human
form.

Or, if a more matter-of-fact statement of the idea is more con¬
vincing, we may take it in the words of Tucker’s Light of Nature,
“All who hold the world and the afFairs of men governed by a
superior wisdom and foresight, whether they conceive it residing
in one or many, .... must be allowed to believe in God”; or of
the fundamentally rational Emerson, who nevertheless bids us
“when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart
and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color.”
The reader who brings to the Laws an imagination thus pre¬
pared will be tempted to say that nothing less than wilful blind¬
ness or a defective feeling for the Greek can fail to see that
Plato’s religious temper is (with some irrepressible touches of
satire) essentially that of Tennyson, Emerson, and Arnold. All
the great historic Platonists have held that those

Whose faith has centre everywhere

Nor cares to fix itself to form

need not and should not disturb the forms to which others
“link a truth divine.”

The last two-fifths of the book are an anticipatory refutation
of the Epicurean doctrine that the gods do not concern them¬
selves with human affairs or that they neglect trifles, a denunci¬
ation of the most impious heresy of all, the belief that the divine
justice can be bought, and an eloquent appeal for faith in a
moral providence in spite of the obvious difficulties suggested
by the apparent permission of evil. The faith of which Plato
speaks is substantially contained in the canons of theology laid
down in the Republic. In the Republic the existence of God is
taken for granted and the argument for immortality is con¬
firmed by the myth to which it is only an introduction. In the
Laws, after the demonstration of the primacy of soul, which in¬
volves the existence of God, attention is concentrated on the
two heresies about the gods. The problems of the Book of Job
are met with the eloquence of the Psalms and the arguments of
all justifications of the ways of God to man from Boethius to

803 B 2

Phaedr. 246 CD
Tim. 40 DE

Rep. 370-81
But cf. 365 D 7-8

608 D-6ir A

614 B ff.

396

WHAT PLATO SAID

899 D 7

900 A 7

902-3

903 A 10
887 B

Rep. 367 B
357 A, 487 B

(Loeb)

Phaedo 114 D 7
77 E 8

Gorg. 503 E ff-
507 E ff.

903 E
903 D

904 A
Phaedr. 246 C
Tim. 41 B
Epin. 981 A ff.
984 D

904 C

904 CD

Rep. 387 C
Tim

Pope and Tennyson's In Memoriam. To those who admit the
existence of the gods by reason of their own affinity to the di¬
vine, but are skeptical of their care for humanity, the Athenian
shows that the very idea of God implies supreme virtue and su¬
preme power. The gods have power to know and order all things
aright, and they cannot be supposed to fail through sloth or neg¬
lect. No careful human physician or shepherd neglects details
in the treatment of his patients or flock; still less can we attrib¬
ute such negligence to the gods. This perhaps suffices by way of
constraining argument, but we need some further charm or
myth to work as a spell upon the soul. We must say to the
skeptical youth: The power that oversees the world has ordered
all things for the safety and perfection of the whole, and so thy
own ephemeral and insignificant being, unhappy boy, exists not
for its own sake but that the existence of the universal life may
be blessed and perfect. But thou repinest because thou knowest
not in what way these doings and sufferings conspire for the wel¬
fare of the whole and for thine own good as far as may be. The
moral governor of the universe is not required in each instance
to build up everything from the elements; soul is united now
with one body and now with another. The great draughts-play-
er who oversees all has only to regulate the moves by transfer¬
ring each soul to a higher or lower place as it improves or de¬
teriorates. For when our king beheld our actions instinct with
life and full of evil and good, and saw that soul and body,
though not eternal, are indestructible like the gods of tradition,
since without either the generation of living things must cease,
and perceived that the good element in soul is by nature bene¬
ficial, he planned to secure the victory of the good and deter¬
mined the precise seat and abode due to every degree of excel¬
lence or evil in soul. But the attainment of these degrees he left
to our own wills. For in general every man is such as the voli¬
tions of his own soul make him. Thus all things that partake of
life and are self-determined to virtue or vice constantly shift
their places by the law and order of fate. Characters slightly
altered are shifted about on the surface of the earth. But the
soul that from its own choice or harmful influence becomes ful¬
filled with evil is clogged and imbruted and gravitates down to
the fabled Hades which living men dream of or fear, or to

LAWS

397

something worse. But the soul that through communion with
the divine is likened unto it is transferred and borne away to a
region of blessedness. This is the justice and way of the gods
who dwell in Olympus. Learn thou that deemest thyself neg¬
lected by the gods that the better soul in life and in all the
changes and chances of death shall go to its own place with the
good and do and suffer with its like. From this justice neither
thou nor any follower of the wicked shall boast to have escaped.
Though being exceeding small, thou thinkest to dive into the
depths of the earth or being raised up and exalted in pride thou
wouldst take wings and fly up to the heavens, yet shalt thou at
last pay the due penalty, whether here on earth, in Hades, or in
some more direful place. And even such shall be the fate of
those who provoke thy wonder and thy doubts, raised up to
prosperity and seeming happiness through unholy deeds, in
whose lives as in a mirror thou thinkest to see reflected the utter
carelessness of the gods because thou knowest not in what way
they contribute to the whole. Therefore be persuaded by us and
by your elders that of the gods thou knowest not what thou say-
est.

But to those who think that divine justice can be bought or
perverted by incense and prayer we say that we are possessions
of the gods and good spirits who are our helpers in the unceasing
warfare of good against evil. Grasping greed, misproportion,
and evil in fleshly bodies are named disease; in the air and the
seasons, wasting, blight, pestilence, and corruption; in the cities
and polities of men, injustice. Now there have arisen among
men lawless and vicious natures who with fawning words and
flattering speech seek to persuade us that we may embrace this
evil, this grasping greed, this injustice, and yet escape its penal¬
ties. To what must they liken our keepers and warders the
gods? To a pilot, persuaded by wine and gifts to run his ship
ashore? To a charioteer, bribed to overturn his car? To a gener¬
al who betrays his army? To a watchdog who shares the booty
of the wolves? It may not be. Of all impieties this belief that
the gods may be in any way wooed or won by prayers and offer¬
ings to condone injustice is the worst.

This is our proemium on impiety. And if we have been be¬
trayed into unseemly vehemence, it was through indignation at

904 E
Od. 19. 43

Theaet. 176
728 EC
Apol. 40-41

905 A

Ps. 139:8 ff.
Herod. 4. 132
Aen. 12. 893

905 B

90s C

90s D

906 A 7, Phaedo
62 B

Cf.902B8,644DE
803 C

906 A
906 BC
Symp. 188 B

Tim. 82 A 3

906 D

907 C

881 A, 885 C 3
886 A 7, 887 E 7,
899 C

Theaet. 176 D

WHAT PLATO SAID

On 701 C, 804 B
Rep. 536 C

908 A

909 A
Phaedo 107 D 1
Rep. 502 B 2, 492
E 6

908 B ff., 908 E

909 B

Tim. 71 A 7
Cic. De leg. II. 8.

19

Book XI

913 A

398

the thought that the impious expected to obtain license for
their wickedness by their superior dialectic. Thus apologizing,
as he often does, for the intensity of his language, Plato passes
from the long preamble to the briefer law in which he amuses
himself and relieves his feelings by prescribing penalties for the
invincible ignorance of unpersuaded and impenitent atheists.
They shall be imprisoned in the house of sobering and suffer the
cruel and unusual punishment of listening to admonitions and
lectures for the salvation of their souls, from members of the
nocturnal council of elders, and on repetition of the offense may
be put to death. There are various distinctions and penalties of
different kinds of impiety. Severer treatment is meted out to
those in whom impiety is conjoined with immorality. Simple
atheism is less to be reprobated than the belief that the justice
of the gods can be bought off, and the severest penalties of all
are reserved for those who, disbelievers themselves, practice on
the superstitious terrors of the people, raising false expectations
in the souls of the living and claiming that they can raise the
spirits of the dead. To forestall such abuses the law shall pro¬
hibit private shrines and private religious mysteries and initia¬
tions.

The comparative, but only comparative, inartistic dulness of
the eleventh and twelfth books of the Laws may be variously
explained as due to the unfinished condition of the entire work,
to the weaknesses of age, to the weariness of a long task, or to
the nature of the material. It consists for the most part of a
rapid enumeration of details, which can be found in available
translations, which show that the dreamer Plato was, in ex¬
treme old age, an indefatigable student of facts, but which it
would serve no purpose to repeat in full here. The dulness is
illuminated by some fine sentences and eloquent passages. Pla¬
to still introduces his legal prescriptions with edifying hortatory
preambles. There emerge from time to time significant generali¬
zations, fundamental principles of Platonic politics and legisla¬
tion, and interesting analogies with Athenian law.

Broadly speaking, the subject of these books is contractual or
quasi-contractual relations and torts, with such edifying di¬
gressions as the various topics suggest.

Let no one touch or move my property, nor I that of others

LAWS

399

while I have my senses. The ancient precept, “don't take up
what you did not deposit," forbids us to disturb a treasure trove
or consult alleged soothsayers about it. The old expression,
“Thou shalt not move the immovable," applies to this, and we
may well believe that to violate it will blight the birth of chil¬
dren. What will be the penalty from the gods God knows.

Any citizen shall give information to the proper magistrate,
and Delphi shall be consulted on the disposal of the trove. The
same principle applies to property forgotten or left by the way-
side. Disputes about such goods may be determined by the rec¬
ords. Rules are prescribed for the emancipation of slaves and
the behavior of freedmen, for disputes about the ownership of
cattle, and for club collections. As in other transactions, there
is to be no enforcement of credit. It is humorously provided
that a doctor or trainer who purchases a defective or diseased
slave shall have no redress. All purchased goods shall be un¬
adulterated. A preamble generalizes the concept of adulteration
to include many forms of fraud, deceit, and insincerity. Such
actions are never opportune, as the mob affirms. No man shall
name two prices in one day, and no one shall attest the merit of
his wares by an oath. The condition of most of us in respect of
purity and holiness makes it best for us not to sully the names
of the gods with light lips. Retail trade naturally exists for the
benefit of mankind by equalizing distribution, but the power of
money corrupts the human nature of most of those who engage
in it. Suppose — it is an absurd supposition, but suppose — inn¬
keeping were made the business of good men, what a friendly
and kindly thing it would be! But, as it is, men establish their
lodges in some vast wilderness and receive the weary and storm-
vexed traveler not as a friend and guest but as a captive held to
exorbitant ransom. The proverb says that it is hard to fight
against two. The two evils against which we must contend are
poverty and wealth. We shall forbid citizens to engage in trade
and try to limit the shamelessness of the resident aliens whom
we employ for this purpose. The details of the law follow.

Contracts are normally to be fulfilled and enforced. Crafts¬
men shall be punished for not completing work at the time
promised. They must not put too high a price upon their work,
and the orderer shall be subject to penalties if he does not pay

913 d

913 b

913 c

On 865 DE
On 641 D

914 A
914 B
914 CD
On 741 C
9I4-I5

915 BE

Cf. 742 C, 849 E
Rep. 556 B

916 AB

916 D

917 B

Prot. 313 D

918 A-D
Rep. 371 C 6

918 E

919 B

On Euthyd. 297 D

919 D-920 C
Crito 52 DE
Symp. 196 C

921

400

WHAT PLATO SAID

921 D 4
Rep. 395 C 1

__ 923 A 3

Rep. 617 D 7

Cf. on 740 B

926 C

92s DE

926-27

On 865 DE

929 B

929 C

930 A

930 BC

93i A

Phaedr. 239 E 4-6

promptly. Incidentally, the word “craftsman” suggests those
artisans of our safety, the military craftsmen, who should be
honored by all citizens when they do their work well.

Inheritance and wills are an embarrassing problem for legisla¬
tors, who are too easily intimidated by the loud protests of the
dying man that he has a right to do what he pleases with his
own. Creature of a day, he does not know his own or his own
self, nor does he know that both belong not to him but to the
race; for which the legislator must take thought. The details of
the law, including intestates, follow. They allow some margin
for personal caprice, but the chief aim is the maintenance of the
number of responsible citizens and the security of the lot. The
provisions of Attic law for the marriage of an heiress to the next
of kin are mitigated by the allowance of appeal in case of excep¬
tional hardship, supported by an oath that the lawgiver himself
if alive would grant an exception. A sort of preamble to this
provision repeats Plato’s reflections on the obstacles to the reali¬
zation of all ideal schemes, and the impossibility of generalized
legislation doing full justice to particular cases. Adoption and
guardianship receive much attention. The care of orphans, al¬
ready touched upon, is made the occasion of a solemn preamble
recalling former appeals to religious or mythical sanctions of
this pre-eminent duty. Any kinsman or citizen, or the orphan
himself on reaching full age, may prosecute the guardian for
malversation. The disinheritance of a son by an angry father,
involving as it does the succession to the lot, is of serious con¬
cern to the state. A son so disinherited with concurrence of the
family council may be adopted by another citizen. The char¬
acters of the young change. A court or commission of domestic
relations shall deal with quarrels between man and wife and
permit separation for hopeless incompatibility. Widows and
widowers left with children are advised not to impose a step¬
parent upon them.

Neglect of parents calls for another solemn preamble. Besides
the visible gods there are invisible gods whom we worship in the
images that represent them. But no such lifeless statue can be
so sacred as the living form of an aged, perhaps bedridden,
parent in the home and at the hearth. The tales of Oedipus,
Amyntor, and Theseus testify to the potency of a parent’s curses

LAWS

401

or prayers. For him who is deaf to these warnings we invoke the
penalties of the law, stripes, imprisonment, and fines.

Injuries by potions fall into two classes, the natural and the
supposedly supernatural. Even if one knew the truth about sor¬
ceries and spells, it would be difficult to teach it, and it is idle to
try to convince the suspicious souls of men that they are unreal
when we ourselves have no definite proof to give. We will pun¬
ish the sorcerer, then, for his likeness to the injurer, and if he is
by profession a prophet or diviner, put him to death. On the
same principle death shall be the penalty for a doctor who in¬
jures another by natural poisons. The topics of thefts and other
injuries remind us that the purpose of punishment is not to undo
the past but to correct, deter, and warn.

A preamble warns against brutalizing the soul by violent and
abusive language. It is a form of madness. Ridicule and mimic¬
ry of citizens shall be forbidden. Buffoonery and the desire to
rouse a laugh are incompatible with dignity and greatness of
soul. Yet authorized comedians may lampoon others in jest, but
not in passionate earnest. No man need go hungry in a well-
governed state, and in our state there shall be no beggars. Un¬
willing witnesses may be compelled to testify. After two con¬
victions of perjury a man need not testify, after three he must
not. Every good thing in life is attended by its natural canker
or blight. The canker of justice is the rhetorical plea of the ad¬
vocate. Whether art or knack, it shall have no place in our
state. The alien who practices it shall be banished. The citizen,
if his motive is gain, shall be put to death. If it is ambition,
death shall be the penalty on a second conviction.

All pretense of dialogue is abandoned in the first three-fourths
of the twelfth book, and the items enumerated are rarely intro¬
duced by preambles or connected by transitions. Beginning
with misconduct of ambassadors, Plato passes on to theft and
rapine, not to be justified by the example of the gods. He then
passes to military organization, the fundamental principle of
which is the subjection of all citizens, men and women, to con¬
trol. Anarchy is to be rooted out from the lives of men and ani¬
mals. Dances and physical training generally shall keep war in
view; social unity and co-operation are all essential. The citizen
from childhood must learn to rule and be ruled and shall culti-

932 AB

932 E ff.

933 D4

934 A ff.

On Prot. 324 AB

934 DE

935 AB

936 A
936 BC

936 E

937 C

937 D

938 A

Gorg. 462 BC
On 627 B

Book XII

941 A

942 BC

942 CD
Rep. 563 C
On 832 E

942 C

On Prot. 326 E

402

WHAT PLATO SAID

942 D

944-45 A

945 B

945 C
Cf. 753 A
945 E ff.
Cf. 753 BC

947 A-E

Xen. Mem. II. 1.

33

947 E

948 A

948 B

948 D

948 E

948-49

949 A

Apol. 34 C
Isoc. Anlid. 321

949 B

vate a temper of acceptance and unfastidiousness in respect of
food and drink and hard living. The head and the feet should go
bare.

These principles are a kind of preamble. Detailed regulations
and penalties follow. But actions for military misconduct should
be brought with care. Justice is the daughter of reverence. For
example, the abusive term “shield-flinger” is often misapplied.
If Patroclus had been revived after the loss of the arms of Achil¬
les, a base enemy might have cast it up at him. Soldiers often
drop their shields innocently; and the law must distinguish cases
and punish severely only when the loss is really disgraceful. The
choice of examiners to pass on the conduct of magistrates at the
expiration of their term is a serious and difficult matter. They
are as vital to the preservation of the polity from dissolution as
undergirders and braces to the unity of the innumerable parts of
a ship. They shall be chosen by a complicated and many-staged
process of election held in the temple of Helios and Apollo,
where they shall reside during the exercise of their functions. An
appeal from their decisions shall lie to the select judges. Plato
indulges himself in a beautiful page of Ruskinian fancy and elo¬
quence in description of the honors that they shall receive in
life, the public ceremonies of their burial, and the long-lasting
grove-encircled tomb where annual contests shall be held in
their memory. Yet the frailty of human nature requires provi¬
sion for a special court to try any one of these who may be in¬
dicted for conduct unworthy of his office.

Without transition we pass to the subject of judicial oaths. A
change in men’s ideas about the gods draws after it a change in
their laws. The simple Rhadamanthine decision by the oath of
the parties is no longer safe today, says Plato, thinking perhaps
rather of Athens than of his own utopian city. It is horrible to
know that in view of the many lawsuits in the city half of the
citizens with whom we associate so lightly are perjurers. Oaths,
then, shall be taken by dicasts, by some electors and officials of
election, and by umpires and judges of contests when nothing
that human opinion calls gain is at stake. But no litigant shall
take an oath either when bringing action or at the trial. Nor
shall any litigant appeal to the pity of the judges or speak of the
matter.

LAWS

403

Alien admixture is opposed to the principles and the interest
of our state. Yet absolute prohibition of intercourse will seem
churlish to less well-governed foreign states. We cannot disre¬
gard the opinions of others. For men’s judgments of right and
wrong are superior to their practice, and even the wicked distin¬
guish good and bad men by a divine intuition. Care for one’s
reputation, then, is commendable in the world as it is, and the
best way to be thought good is to be good. Our new city will
properly hope and expect to be esteemed among the best-gov¬
erned states upon which the sun and the other gods look down.
Travel abroad shall be limited to men over forty sent on public
business, or after fifty as inspectors and students of foreign in¬
stitutions. There is need of experience of evil as well as of good.
And even in badly governed states there spring up from time to
time a few divinely inspired men from whom we may learn.
Such inspectors, carefully selected, shall report their observa¬
tions to a special synod of supervisors of the laws. This synod
shall include those of the priests who have received special hon¬
ors, the ten eldest of the guardians of the laws, the superintend¬
ent of education and his surviving predecessors. Each of these
shall (like a Roman senator) select a youth between the ages of
thirty and forty, to accompany him and share the discussion of
the laws and the studies that will best conduce to the under¬
standing of them. The studies selected by the elders shall be
pursued by the younger men. The conduct of these companions
shall reflect credit or discredit on those who selected them, and
the most distinguished of them shall “guard” the rest of the
city.

To this synod, then, the inspectors of foreign ways shall re¬
port, and they shall be honored or punished (even with death)
according as they have profited or been corrupted by the study
of foreign institutions. Foreign visitors may be classified under
four types: summer traders, curious sight-seers, public officials,
and in rare cases inspectors like ours. They are to be courteously
treated with due regard to these distinctions, yet with watchful
care that they do no harm. Our state shall thus honor Zeus
Xenios and not imitate the savage Egyptian practice of driving
out strangers by strange foods and sacrifices.

On this without transition follow miscellaneous regulations

949 E-950 A

950 D

On 821 CD

950 D ff.

951 B 7
Rep. 408 -9

Cf. 642 C
951-52

On 820 D 10

952 B 5

952-53

953 E

Cf. supra, p. 26

954 A

404

WHAT PLATO SAID

954 C

954 E

955 B
955 C
955 D

E-oe;6 A

Cf. 766-67
956 B ff.

956 CD
Cf. 766 ff., 846

957 A

On 769 D

957 A

957 B
Cf. 772 C

957 CD

On Hipp. Maj.
286 C

On 858 C
958

On 632 C

959 C
Phaedo 115 CD
Cic. Tusc. I. 43

959 D

for the giving of security, the search for stolen property, the
statutes of limitations in disputes about property, interference
with witnesses, recovery of stolen goods, harboring of exiles, acts
of private war or peace, the acceptance of bribes under whatso¬
ever pretext. Votive offerings to the gods must be of moderate
value. The specific prohibition of gold and ivory in temples is,
or rather was, one of the most frequently quoted passages in
Plato.

These disconnected items conclude the substantive laws, and
Plato returns to the organization of the courts. These in order
are the court of judges or rather arbitrators for neighbors agreed
upon by the litigants, the court of the villagers and tribesmen,
the court of select judges. Details of procedure and appeals have
already been discussed. But to vary the proverb, it is well to
repeat twice and thrice the right. Other details omitted by an
elderly lawgiver will be added by younger legislators. They
will find many good laws of ancient lawgivers to guide them.
When the code is complete and has been tested by experience, it
shall be unchangeable. We have already spoken and shall say a
word at the end of the differing ideas of the just and the good
that distinguish our state from others. Of these things the
judges shall make a special study, and there is no more effica¬
cious education in them and no better test of the random praise
and blame in other literature and teaching, and the vain con¬
tentions of debate, than the laws themselves if they are good
laws and justify the association of nomos with nous . The proce¬
dure in the execution of judgments concludes this topic.

To complete the program outlined in the first book, there re¬
mains the subject of death and burial. Details shall be regu¬
lated by the exegetes. But the dead shall be so disposed of as
not to injure the living by the occupation of productive soil.
And the monument shall provide space for not more than four
heroic lines in eulogy of the dead. The immortal soul is the real
self, the body is only an eidolon — a semblance. The real brother
or father whom we mourn has passed away. We must make the
best of it, and be moderate in our expenditure on the lifeless al¬
tar to the gods below — the body.

The conclusion of the entire work recurs to an idea barely
glanced at hitherto but so prominent in the Republic that it is

LAWS

405

sometimes mistakenly said to be omitted altogether in the Laws . cf. 817 E-818 a
How, in the happy image which the wisdom of antiquity sym- 960 c
bolized in the name of the third fate, shall our work be made
irreversible? How shall we give to the institutions of our city as 960 d
much permanence as the nature of mortal things allows? It can
only be by the guidance of a wisdom informed by a higher edu¬
cation than that provided for the mass of the citizenry. We have 961 ab
already spoken of a special synod of selected law-wardens and
young men of promise. We may perhaps discover in this the 961c
anchor and principle of salvation that we seek. It is the soul and 961 d
the head that preserves every animal — or rather the reason in
the soul and the senses of sight and hearing in the head. It is the
reason of the pilot combined with his perceptions that saves the
ship, and we may say the same of the general, the doctor, and
every expert. But to attain their object they must know the
marks at which they aim — as victory and health. Similarly, the 962 cde
state must contain an element that knows (not merely opines)
the one and only aim of true statesmanship.

Plato places this element in his synod or nocturnal council,
which corresponds broadly to the philosopher-kings or higher
part of the guardians in the Republic. Plato does not repeat here
the description of the higher education in the Republic. But he
retains its essential features, science (astronomy) and dialectics.

The denials of this by many modern interpreters are uncritical.

On this essential point I have little to add to what I wrote in
1903. Mill says: “In his second imaginary commonwealth, that
of the Leges, it [dialectic] is no longer mentioned; it forms no
part of the education either of the rulers or of the ruled.” Simi¬
larly Gomperz: “Plato in his old age grew averse from dialectic.

In the Laws , the last product of his pen, he actually turned his
back upon it and filled its vacant place at the head of the curric¬
ulum of education with mathematics and astronomy.” These
statements, even if we concede that they are true in a sense to
the letter, convey a totally false impression, as a slight study of
the last pages of the twelfth book of the Laws will show. Plato
does not care to re-write the sixth and seventh books of the Re¬
public. But he defines as clearly as in the earlier work the neces¬
sity and function of dialectic and the higher education in the
state. Even in the first book we are forewarned that to com-

40 6

WHAT PLATO SAID

961 c

961

962
962 C 7

Rep. 424 D 1

962 D

962 E 4
Rep. 562 E 9

963 D

964 C
Rep. 366 E 5-6

964 E
Tim. 69, 70

965 A

965 C

Meno 74 A 9

966 B 1

plete the organization of the state the founder must set over it
guardians — some possessed of intelligence, others of right opin¬
ion.

In the twelfth book we are introduced to these guardians, who
are to possess knowledge and not merely right opinion. They
compose a nocturnal council which is to be the anchor of the
state. Recurring to the imagery and the manner of the early
dialogues, Plato tells us that as the pilot, the physician, and the
general represent intelligence, nous , applied to the definite ends
of their respective arts, so this highest council is the head, the
soul, the mind of the state, possessing knowledge of the political
skopos or true end of rule. No state can prosper or be saved un¬
less such knowledge resides in some part of it as a “guardhouse.”
The beginning of such knowledge is not to wander in guesses at
many things but to look to a unity of thought. Now the laws
and customs of our cities aim at many things — wealth, power,
and the free — forsooth, life. Our aim is virtue. But virtue is
both four and.one. The intelligent physician can define his one
aim. Must not the intelligent ruler be able to define his? It is
easy to show how the four virtues are many. To exhibit their
unity is harder. A man who amounts to anything must know,
not only the names, but the logos of things. And the true guard¬
ians, teachers, and rulers of a state must not merely rebuke
vice and inculcate virtue, but they must be able to teach its in¬
herent power and potency. The state may be likened to the
body, the younger guardians to the senses in the head, the elders
to the brain. They cannot all be educated alike. Therefore we
must advance to some more exact education than that which
we have described. This is the education already glanced at in
our phrases about the unity of purpose. The essence of the more
accurate method is our old acquaintance, the ability to look to
one idea from the many and unlike particulars. The guardians
must be able to do what Meno could not do, see just what iden¬
tical principle runs through all four. And similarly with regard
to the beautiful, the good, and all other worthy things, they
must not only know in what sense each is one and many, but
they must be able to expound their knowledge. The thing being
so clearly indicated, it would be pitiful quibbling to object that
the word “dialectic” does not happen to occur here. Its omis-

LAWS 407

sion is possibly due to the fact that the Athenian throughout the
Laws talks down to the level of his unsophisticated Spartan and
Cretan interlocutors. Mathematics and astronomy, then, are
not substituted for dialectic, but are added for a special reason
among the worth-while things which the guardians must under¬
stand with real knowledge. The multitude may follow tradition.
The guardians must be able to demonstrate the truths of natu¬
ral religion, as we have done. Astronomy, the study of the or¬
dered movements of the heavens, is a great aid to this. With
astronomy are involved the necessary mathematics, which also
in their relation to music and the arts are of use to him who is
to shape the characters and laws of men.

In the last two pages of the Laws Plato evades giving a de¬
tailed account of the curriculum of the higher education thus
indicated — perhaps he was weary, perhaps he did not care to
repeat the Republic . In any case, there is no justification for the
statement that the Laws ignores the higher education of the
rulers or substitutes in it mathematics and astronomy for dia¬
lectic. On the contrary, the unity of Plato’s thought is strik¬
ingly illustrated by his return in the pages just analyzed to some
of the favorite ideas of the Republic and earlier dialogues.

967 E

968 DE

EPINOMIS

Diog. L. III. 37

951-52,961,968 B
Supra, p. 406
990 A; 984 B, D;
986 CD

981 C
984 B
On Symp. 202 E

Ax. 366 D ff.
Laws 803 B

974 E

975 C

Aesch. Prom. 450
975 DE

The Epinomis, by its title an appendix to the Laws , was some¬
times attributed by the ancients to Philip of Opus, their sup¬
posed editor. Its ostensible object is to expound more fully the
functions and teachings of the Nocturnal Council, which those
who reject the dialogue think are sufficiently explained in the
Laws. They are to teach the theodicy of the Laws and in sup¬
port of it are to study the science of astronomy, which is praised
with a mystic fervor of which there are few traces in the Laws.

There are only one or two distinctly un-Platonic ideas, which
are sometimes accounted for by the assumption that they repre¬
sent an otherwise-unknown latest phase of Plato’s philosophy.
The aether, for example, in anticipation of Aristotle, is recognized
as a fifth kind of matter in addition to the generally accepted
four “elements,” and the conception of daemons receives fanci¬
ful and perhaps superstitious developments. The chief reason
for doubting Plato’s authorship is the obscurity and abstract
prolixity of the style, or at any rate of many sentences, which
goes far beyond any parallels that may be fairly cited from the
Laws. Apologists for the dialogue sometimes deny this and
sometimes attribute it to the weakness of extreme old age. In
any case the Epinomis is an interesting and valuable document
for the history of Greek philosophy and the school of Plato and
the transition to Aristotle. But there were surely other Atheni¬
ans of that day besides Plato and Aristotle capable of writing a
thoughtful philosophical essay.

The dialogue begins with some general pessimistic observa¬
tions on life that recall the Axiochus or the Laws. Such happi¬
ness as is possible is reserved for the few. It then enters upon a
discussion of the meaning of sophia or wisdom par excellence
which may be conjecturally associated with that in the first
book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The lower meanings of the
word are dismissed partly by a classification of the productive
arts and sciences as relating to necessities, food, the “weaving”
of habitations, pottery, weaving, tools, sport and imitation, de-

4O8

EPINOMIS

409

fenses against all manners of evils, generalship and medicine,
navigators and lawyers. To these with apparent reference to
Aristotle the writer adds what some would call natural parts and Eth. Nic. 1142 b
others quickness of wit. All these may give the opinion, the
reputation of wisdom. But what is the one real knowledge that
merits the name? What is the knowledge, the absence of which
would make man a most senseless and irrational creature? Sure- 976 d
ly it is number, which is the gift of the god to whom we owe all 976e
other blessings, including our daily bread— Uranos, heaven, or 977a
whatever we please to call it. Take away number and man Tim. 2sb
might acquire the moral virtues, but he could never be wise and 977 de
all the arts would perish.

But though this use of number has its importance, its higher 97sab
spiritual uses are far greater. It is the source of music and all
rhythm and order, and of the genuine knowledge which we dis- on Meno 9s ab
tinguish from true opinion. How did man acquire it? He alone 978bc
of all creatures received from the universe the capacity for learn¬
ing it. And the revolving heavens, night and day, never cease
teaching him, one, two, one, two, till the dullest learns to count, 97s d
while the changes of the moons and the seasons teach us also the
relations of numbers as well as provide for the growth of our
food.

Evil is due to the defects of human nature. The chief prob- 979a
lem of our Laws was how to make men good. We easily under- £,ws 705 D
stood what good means in respect of the three moral virtues, but 979 c
the problem still remains what is it to be wise, not only in repu¬
tation but in deed. It is permissible to recall what we said in the 803 e-so4 b
Laws about honoring the gods with song and play, and to pray 98obc
that the words which occur to us now may be right and fine. 98od
Cleinias and Megillus took notes of the theodicy and teaching
of the tenth book of the Laws and will recall that the sum of it
was the primacy and supremacy of soul. Body and soul consti- 98i ab
tute the living creature. There are five kinds of bodies, if we in- °cDaedr' 246
elude as the fifth the aether. The predominance of each yields a 981 c
type of animal. The creatures about us and the plants are main- 98i d
ly earth with admixture of other elements. The visible stars are 98i de
mainly fire, combined with a slight portion of the other ele¬
ments. They are either immortal or very long-lived. The regu- <,82 a
larity of their ordered movements is, contrary to ordinary opin-

410

WHAT PLATO SAID

982 CD

982 E

On Gorg. 482 AB

983 A
983 B

982
983 C

983 D
Laws 899 B
984 A- C

984 D
On Symp. 202 E

Phileb. 50 A

985 A

On Laws 738 B,
759 C

Laws 881 A 1

986 B

987 A
Cic. De div. 1

987 D

ion, a proof that they have souls, and that their actions are de¬
liberated and determined from of old, not like ours, fickle and
irresolute. Always to do the same things in the same way for the
same reason is a mark of intelligence. Their very size (the sun
is demonstrably greater than the earth) proves that they pos¬
sess life. If they had not souls put into them by God, what
could make those mighty masses revolve eternally, and move in
their choric dance? And if they were soulless matter, how could
they hold their courses from month to month and year to year
with such precision? Man is a poor creature, but materialism
exceeds the allowable measure of nonsense. Soul is always cause
and the heavenly bodies are either gods or images of the gods
wrought by the gods themselves. And between these and the
living animals of earth it is reasonable to suppose that there are
three other kinds molded by soul out of ether, air, and water,
with some intermixture.

The traditional gods we accept. The visible heavenly gods we
hold in chief honor. To the intermediate and mediating trans¬
parent and invisible daemons of aether and the denizens of air
who, being wise, know our thoughts and who, unlike the gods,
are susceptible of pleasure and pain since they love good men
and hate bad, we pray that their mediation may be propitious.
The element of water we may plausibly assign to the demigods.

No sensible legislator will interfere with the rites, shrines, or
traditions of worship arising from visions or dreams of these di¬
vine beings, taking it upon himself to know what no mortal can
know, that they are false. Still greater would be the folly and
the cowardice that neglected the due worship of the visible gods.
There are in especial eight powers in the heavens, that of the
sun, the moon, the fixed stars, and five others, all akin, all di¬
vine, all and not only the first three moving in exactly defined
orbits. The fourth and fifth (Venus and Mercury) move about
equally with the sun. The name of the fifth is not known be¬
cause the first observers of the heavens were barbarians, invited
thereto by the clear summer skies of Egypt and Syria. The
other four are Kronos, Zeus, ruddy Ares, and the cosmos itself,
which moves in the opposite direction from the rest.

Though our climate breeds the best men, the inferior clear¬
ness of our summer skies retarded our knowledge of these di-

EPINOMIS

4i i

vinities. But whatever the Greeks take over from the barbari¬
ans they better in the end. And we shall develop a nobler wor¬
ship of these gods than that which we have received. The first
ideas of primitive man about the divinity are naturally inaccept-
able to sober men today. And later generations developed phi¬
losophies of materialism which our doctrine of the primacy of
soul rejected when we discussed the penalties due to impiety.

To return to our quest for wisdom. The highest virtue is pi¬
ety, to which ignorance is the chief obstacle. To cure this igno¬
rance and develop piety, virtue, and true wisdom in those higher
and temperamentally well blended natures fitted to control and
rule the rest, there is needed a special education. They must
study astronomy (paradoxical as the word may sound) and the
mathematical disciplines, arithmetic, geometry (another ridicu¬
lous term), plane and solid, and the mathematical principles of
music, without which there is no royal road to astronomy itself.
We mean scientific astronomy, not the Hesiodic observation of
the stars. Their education must also include physics so far as
attainable by man, and dialectics and the precise apprehension
of astronomical times. So will they be brought to realize the
truth and beauty of the saying that all things are full of gods
and that these our superiors do not forget or neglect us. If right¬
ly pursued, such studies are a blessing; if wrongly — heaven help
us! The right way is to look to their unity and the bonds that
link them. Let no one deem such inquiry into the divine nature
impious. The contrary is true.

These, whether hard or easy, are the studies; this is the breed¬
ing, this the way that leads a man to unity with himself and to
true happiness and wisdom in life — and, we may add in jest and
earnest, to the islands or continents of the blessed after death.
Our quest is ended, and we have also confirmed what we said at
the start, that happiness is reserved for the few.

988 c

988 £

Laws 891 ff.

989 B ff.

On Theaet. 144
AB

Rep. 37s C
989 BC

990 A
990 C 6

Rep. 525 D 6-7

990 D 2

fecp. 527 A 6

991 AB

991 BC
991 C 2 ff.

On Euthyd. 291 A
992 A

988 A

On Phaedr. 251
992 BC

DOUBTFUL DIALOGUES

ALCIBIADES I

The first Alcibiades contains no thoughts that are necessarily
un-Platonic. The ancients indeed regarded it as the best intro¬
duction to the Platonic philosophy, and in ancient and modern
literature it has been frequently quoted for two distinctively
Platonic ideas that are nowhere else so fully and clearly ex¬
pressed — the idea that the body is the instrument of the soul,
which is the true self, and the idea that, as the eye can see itself
only by reflection, so the mind best knows itself through the re¬
flection of its thoughts in another mind. But if we attribute it
to Plato we have to assume the improbability that he thought it
worth while to elaborate a tedious, if scholastically convenient,
summary of a long series of ideas and points that are better and
more interestingly expressed in other dialogues, and that he re¬
peats or quotes himself more often than in any other genuine
work, and we must be prepared to overlook a few expressions
which jar on the ear of any reader who knows intimately Pla¬
tonic Greek. The opinions of modern scholars are divided, and
it is inadvisable to dogmatize. For there are several passages
which it is hard to attribute to any lesser hand than Plato’s.

Socrates explains to Alcibiades why, being a lover of the mind
and not the body, unlike his other admirers, he has waited in
obedience to the daimonion till his first bloom is past before ap¬
proaching him. Alcibiades is filled with boundless ambitions.
Even the fame and power of a Pericles could not satisfy him.
He would cross to Asia and rule the world. “Admitting for the
sake of argument that I cherish such dreams, how can you help
me?” replies Alcibiades.

With a somewhat too abrupt transition as in other spurious
dialogues, Socrates says that he can, provided Alcibiades will
answer his questions. Alcibiades intends to offer himself as an
adviser to the Athenians. He has learned to wrestle and play
the cither; he scorned the flute. About what else is he compe¬
tent to give advice to the state? Not about medicine or archi¬
tecture surely? — About their own affairs. — What affairs? —

415

129-30

132-33

103 A

On Euthyph. 3 B
Prot. 309 AB
Symp. 181 DE

104 BC

Rep. 494 C

1 05 A-D
zo6 A

106 B

Thcag. 315 E 5
106 C

106 E

107 AB
Prot. 319 f.

416

WHAT PLATO SAID

107 D
107 D
109 B
109 D
109 E
no B

no E
in A
Prot. 327 E

Meno 92 E
in B

in B
112 AB
On Euthyph. 8 D

112 E

On Euthyph. 1 1 C

Hippol. 352

113 D

113 E

On Prot. 338 CD
114 AB

114 D-116 D

On Meno 80 A
116E
117 ABC
On Meno 84 A-C

117 CD
On Charm. 171
DE

117-18
On Lysis 218 AB

About peace and war, thinks Alcibiades. But that, Socrates re¬
minds him, means whether it is better to engage in war —
whether it is just. Alcibiades has not learned the nature of jus¬
tice from any teacher. He might have discovered it for himself
if he thought he did not know it already. But even as a boy he
loudly affirmed that he knew that one boy was just and another
unjust. Where, when, and how, then, did he learn it? Perhaps
from the many, says Alcibiades, as he learned to speak Greek.
But the many are at variance with one another, and therefore
cannot have real knowledge. There is no such confusion in their
minds about the difference between a stick and a stone. But
difference of opinion about the just and the unjust is the cause
of all quarrels. Alcibiades, then, does not know justice. As you
say, he replies. Nay, as you say, since the answers are yours, re¬
joins Socrates, developing this well-known Platonic motive at
excessive length, and adorning it with a familiar quotation from
Euripides. Alcibiades evades the difficulty by the argument that
political deliberation is concerned with the profitable, the useful,
not the just. Even if I concede this, says Socrates — postponing
the identification of the just and the useful to 114 E — do you
claim to know what is useful? Is Socrates going to ask him
again where he learned what is profitable? protests Alcibiades.
Why not? rejoins Socrates, unless arguments wear out like pots
and pans and household utensils.

Socrates then challenges Alcibiades to an argument on his
statement that the just and the useful are distinct and different.
If Alcibiades can convince a whole assembly he ought to be able
to teach Socrates. The argument, which fills two or three pages,
imitates the Gorgias, but without its eloquence or dramatic in¬
terest, and with a pedantic iteration of qua , in so far as, in re¬
spect of, and similar formulas. Alcibiades is forced to yield, but
complains like Meno and others that Socrates’ dialectic so turns
his head that he does not know what he is saying. His self-con¬
tradictions, says Socrates, are a proof that he lacks real knowl¬
edge, but his present recognition of his own ignorance is a better
state of mind than his former confidence, for he would now be
willing to accept the guidance of the one who knows. All error
arises from the refusal to do this, and the ignorance that mis¬
takes itself for knowledge is the worst kind of folly. Alcibiades’

ALCIBIADES I

4i7

plight is no more deplorable than that of the great Pericles, who
studied with Anaxagoras and now studies with Damon. For he
who knows can teach, and Pericles, like other Athenian states¬
men, could not teach his own sons or make any other Athenian
a wiser man. What, then, are we to do? Alcibiades thinks that he
is as well equipped as his competitors, who are mostly unedu¬
cated, but Socrates shows him that his real rivals are not the
petty politicians of Athens, but, for example, the kings of Sparta
and the kings of Persia, whose education, wealth, and magnifi¬
cence is described in a digression of some four pages, which is
one of the most famous and most often quoted passages in Pla¬
tonic literature.

Alcibiades, temporarily humbled, again asks, What are we to
do? And Socrates under favor of heaven undertakes to guide
him by another series of questions. We wish to become good.
But everyone is good in that which he knows. What do the good
know in contradistinction to the knowledge of the ordinary arts
and crafts? — How to rule in the city, says Alcibiades. — Rule
what? — And so we are led over familiar ground with many remi¬
niscences of the other dialogues to the idea of doing one’s own
proper work and to the conception of self-knowledge as the pre¬
condition of the kind of knowledge that will make us better.

What is the self? The user and the thing used are twain. The
man — that is, the man’s soul — uses the body and is therefore
not identical with it. The true self is the soul. The oracle that
bade us “know yourself,” then, bids us know the soul. The prac¬
titioners of the ordinary arts do not know themselves. They are
concerned with the body which is a possession of the self, a
thing of the true self, or with the material possessions which are
the things of the things of the self. Socrates, the true lover of
Alcibiades, is the lover of his soul, but he fears that the love of
the populace in Alcibiades may prove too strong for him. For
comely is the countenance of the great-hearted folk of Erech-
theus. But we must strip him to see what he is. Let Alcibiades be¬
fore entering politics prepare himself properly by taking thought
for his soul, his self, and not the things of the self. The best il¬
lustration Socrates can think of is the eye. It sees itself only in
another eye, and in the best part of the eye, the pupil. So the
soul must look to the best, the divine part of the soul, that

Pliaedr. 270 A
On Laches 180 D

118C

Gorg. sis A 4
119 A

119 B

1 19 C ff.

Aristoph. Eq.

188 ff.

120 B

121 ff.

124 BC
124 DE

124 E

125 A

On Laches 194 D
125 BC

125 B

On Ion 536 E

127 B

On Charm. 161 B

128 E

On Charm. 164
DE

On Euthyd. 289 B

129 C

129 E

129-30 ff.

130 E

131 A ff.

131 CD

Gorg. 513 C

132 A

Symp. 216 B s
Charm. 154 D
Gorg. 527 D 3

132 D

133 A
133 B

418

WHAT PLATO SAID

133 c

Laws 716 C
Charm. 1C1 B 6
164 D 4
133 E>

133 E

134 BC
Gorg. 517 C,
519 A

134 c

134 E

Gorg. 466 B ff.

135 B
Gorg. 525 D

135 C
Rep. 590 D
135 D

which is likest God, that which is concerned with knowledge and
wisdom. God, then, is our best mirror. If we know ourselves we
shall be sober and temperate and shall know the things of our¬
selves; if not, not. We were not quite accurate in saying that
the practitioners of the ordinary arts know the things of them¬
selves. They cannot, unless they know themselves, know even
that, still less the things of other men. They cannot be states¬
men. The true statesman must provide not walls or triremes or
docks for the citizens, but virtue. And Alcibiades must first ac¬
quire virtue before he can impart it. Power to do what we please
is not a good unless we please to do right. To be a tyrant is not
happiness for man or state. And it is better for the evil man to
be governed by someone superior to himself, better for him to be
a slave. How shall Alcibiades escape this shameful condition ? —
If you please, Socrates. — Nay, if God wills, Alcibiades. — Their
roles are reversed, and Alcibiades will henceforth pursue Soc¬
rates.

The dialogue is sometimes classified as maieutic. The conclu¬
sion marks it rather as protreptic. I have tried to bring out both
the wealth of Platonic thoughts and the features in the treat¬
ment of them that mark it as probably un-Platonic.

ALCIBIADES II

The general thesis of the second Alcibiades anticipates the re¬
flections about prayer of Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes
and of its sources in the second satire of Persius and the tenth
satire of Juvenal. It is unsafe for any but the wise to pray too
specifically, for the gods may be in a coming-on mood and grant 138 b
us the evils for which in our ignorance we, like Oedipus, impor- i4oe-i a
tune them. As Shakespeare was to express it:

We ignorant of ourselves
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good. So find we profit
By losing of our prayers.

The moral, in the words of Johnson, is:

Still raise for good the supplicating voice
But leave to heaven the measure and the choice.

143 A
148 c
150 c

There is nothing un-Platonic in the thought. The ancients
and the moderns until recently had no doubts. It is now gener¬
ally rejected even by scholars who, while straining at this gnat,
swallow the camel of the sixth and thirteenth epistles. If we de¬
ny it to Plato, it must be because of certain mannerisms and de¬
fects of style. There is perhaps too much imitation of the first
Alcibiades and there are too many conscious reminiscences of
the other dialogues, too many Platonic thoughts juxtaposed 138 a i
with awkward or abrupt transitions. One or two Platonic ideas \f5 a 9
seem to be pushed to the Stoic extreme. There is a scholastic or i4o d i
sophistic complacency in the accumulation of examples. The IJJcs
characterization of Alcibiades is slight and there is in general
a lack of picturesque concreteness. There are some doubtful
phrases, and one or two almost impossible uses of words. On
the other hand, there are some fine passages of Platonic moral
and religious eloquence, and some sentences so good as to pro¬
voke the question, Who but Plato is likely to have written
them?

Socrates abruptly asks Alcibiades if he is going to pray. He

419

138 A ff.

420

WHAT PLATO SAID

Aesch. Septem
725 ff.

Eurip. Plioenissae
64 ff.

138 C

On Prot. 332 C
Euthyph. 12 A
140 C

141 A
Theag. 125 E 8
Ale. I. 105 A-C
141 AB
On Rep. 589 E
(Loeb)
141 C ff.

141 D
Gorg. 470 D

Theag. 124 D

142 A

142 D

143 A

Xen. Mem. I. 3. 2
Diodor. X. 9. 8

143 B ff.

281 BC
143 CD

144 D

145 E

146 A
Gorg. 484 E
146 D
On Lysis 218 AB
146 E

seems lost in reflection. Why should I reflect? replies Alcibiades,
which gives Socrates his cue. But Oedipus, whom Socrates cites
as a warning example of rash prayers, was a madman, says Al-
cibiades. This anticipation of the Stoic thesis, that all the fool¬
ish are mad, gives rise to some dialectic subtleties, some dis¬
crimination of synonyms, and some lessons in elementary logic,
terminating in the common-sense conclusion that we use the
term “madness” only of the highest degree of folly. Many men,
though not mad, ask their own harms of the gods, thinking them
good, whereas he knew that his prayers were for evil. Alcibiades
himself would pray to be tyrant of Greece or of all Europe. Yet
if that endangered his most precious possession, his own soul, it
would be the greatest of evils, as the recent example of Arche-
laus of Macedonia shows. And we could cite many cases of men
who have desired to be generals or win other distinctions which
have brought ruin upon them. Similarly of men's prayers for
children. And when the evils befall them they blame the gods,
forgetting, as Homer already warns us, that their own folly is
the cause. The best prayer is that of the anonymous poet:

Lord Zeus, grant us the good, whether named
in our prayers or forgotten;

Keep us from evil, we pray, even when we ask
it in prayer.

Alcibiades, greatly impressed, opines that ignorance must be
the greatest of evils, if we don't even know how to pray for what
is best for us. But Socrates, giving the argument a sudden turn
familiar to readers of the Euthydemus , argues that ignorance
may be a blessing, in cases where knowledge would be misused.
It would have been better for Orestes not to recognize or know
the mother whom he intended to kill. In short, no special or
particular knowledge is beneficial unless accompanied by knowl¬
edge of the good. This Platonic commonplace is developed to
the conclusion that it would be a sorry state that possessed ora¬
tors to advise and persuade, and soldiers to make war and kill,
but no knowledge of when and how it was best to use them.
After some reminiscences of the Gorgias , it is concluded that
since the majority of mankind cannot really know, it is better
for them not to think that they know. The one knowledge nec¬
essary to right living is knowledge of the good. Polymathy with-

ALCIBIADES II

421

out this is an evil, as the poet hints (all poetry is enigmatic)
who writes:

Many a craft the man knew and he knew all of them badly.

To “know badly” would be a contradiction in terms. The mean¬
ing of Homer must be that it was bad for him to know so many
things. Alcibiades is puzzled but convinced, and agrees with
Socrates that the prayers of the anonymous poet already quot¬
ed, and of the Spartans who pray simply for what is fair and
good, are the best.

The mention of the Spartans suggests a digression on their
good fortune and wealth, and on the oracle of Ammon which de¬
clared that the god preferred the pious speech of the Spartans to
all the costly offerings of the other Greeks. Other examples of
prayers are cited from Homer. Alcibiades is counseled to post¬
pone action till he knows how to deal with gods and men. He is
too “great-souled,” to put it euphemistically, to be content with
the prayer of the Lacedaemonians. Socrates offers to help him,
in Homeric phrase, to remove the cloud from his vision, that
he may clearly distinguish men and gods, and Alcibiades be¬
stows on Socrates the wreath which he was about to deposit in
the temple. The dialogue closes with a quotation from Euripi¬
des, which Plato may have had in mind in a notable passage of
the Laws.

147 A

147 B

At. Eth. Nic. 1141
a is

148 AB

148 C

148 E

Polit. 257 B

149 B

Gorg. 527 D

150 C 8

Symp. 213 E
151 B 10
758 A 6

CLEITOPHON

The slight sketch that bears the name of Cleitophon , one of
the interlocutors in the first book of the Republic , was perhaps
suggested by the complaint of Thrasymachus there that Soc¬
rates asks questions and confutes others but never submits his
own opinions to criticism. In confirmation of this censure the
408 speaker tells how he vainly consulted the most esteemed of Soc-
410 a 7 rates’ “disciples” or whatever he calls them and then Socrates
407 b if. himself. He was drawn to the conclusion that though invaluable
in protreptic and exhortation to acquire wisdom and virtue,
Socrates, since he is unable or unwilling to define what wisdom
and virtue are, is more of a hindrance than a help to those al¬
ready convinced.

The literature of discussion of the little dialogue is out of all
proportion to its significance and to the evidence available for
and against its genuineness. It may be plausibly argued that
the fragment is a discarded introduction to the Republic or to
some other work planned to defend Socrates or to expound the
positive side of his teaching. But it cannot be proved that Plato
did or did not write the dialogue. There is nothing in the
thought that Plato might not have said, and there is little if any¬
thing in the style that would be conclusive evidence of spurious¬
ness. About all that can be said is that it sounds more like what
a reader of the first book of the Republic and of the protreptic
discourses in the Euthydemus might say of Socrates than what
Plato himself would be likely to say, and that there are perhaps
too many reminiscences of the other dialogues.

422

SPURIOUS DIALOGUES

MINOS

The Minos is overcharged with Platonic thoughts not very
well ordered and sometimes too abruptly introduced and it has
some words and phrases which it is difficult to attribute to Plato.
Pie could not have written the first half of the dialogue and it is
hard to conceive who else could have written the last five pages.
There is nothing distinctly un-Platonic in the thought, and there
are many interesting suggestions which make it in conjunction
with the Theages not a bad introduction to the study of Plato’s
politics and ethics.

Apart from the many imitations of and parallels to familiar
Platonic arguments its most notable features are: (i) the defi¬
nition of law as the discovery of that which is, which has im¬
pressed students of jurisprudence more than it does those who
are more familiar with the grammar and idiom of the participle
of the verb “to be” in Greek; (2) the argument that a bad law is
no law; and (3) the disproportionate concluding digression, if a
digression may conclude, on Minos, the wise Cretan lawgiver of
Plomeric tradition, unjustly maligned by the Attic dramatists.

Socrates abruptly asks an unnamed “companion,” What is
law? The Greek word means also custom or convention, and
musical strain, and the verb from which it is derived, and its
compounds, shift from shepherding to practicing, attributing,
and distributing, in ways that make the argument and its transi¬
tions very confusing to the purely English reader. Socrates ex¬
plains, with perhaps unnecessary elaboration, that he wants a
definition of law in general, of that which holds good of all laws,
whatever their particular differences. The reply that law or cus¬
tom is customary things is met by the inductive objection that
speech is not spoken things, vision is not visible things, audition
is not audible things. Visible things are seen by sight and so we
ask what sight is. Customary things are customary by custom
or law. What then is law? Why, just ordinary decrees and ordi¬
nances, and to generalize, law is the decree or opinion of a state.
But we assume law to be a good thing. A bad opinion or decree

425

313 A 4, 313 B s
3i5 D 3

Symp. 202 A 7

313 A

314 BC

On Charm. 159 D

WHAT PLATO SAID

426

on Hipp.3Maf then would not be law. True opinion is the discovery of that
203 84 which really is. But if law is thus the discovery of that
315 a which really is, why do laws differ? Socrates opines that the
discovery of what is is an ideal or aim which law may not always
attain. But, after all, do laws differ so greatly? His interlocutor
334 replies in the manner of Protagoras in the Protagoras with a
development of the topic of the diversity of human customs, a
3isb-d commonplace from the time of Herodotus. Socrates, as in the
°" Hl 3P731Ain' Protagoras, deprecates long speeches and prefers the method of
315 e question and answer. If the just is the just, must it not be the
3i6 a same in Athens and among the Persians? Whoever then fails
on cratyi. 390 a 2 to f;ncl w]iat |Sj fails to find law. All the same, replies the com-
316 ci panion, we never cease altering our laws. Perhaps the changes
are only apparent, replies Socrates. There are writings and laws
Gorg. 518 b 6 of medicine, of agriculture, gardening, cooking, written by those

316 de who know these arts. Laws are political writings composed by
on Laws 8s8 c kings and statesmen who presumably know politics. If they dif-

b fer and vary they don’t know. Again in the other arts he who
knows knows how to distribute and apportion and conduct

317 de things rightly and in accordance with respective value and

worth. The trainer best conducts the human herd in the care
318 a of the body, the shepherd the herd of sheep. Their laws are
best. But the musical meaning of nomos suggests the topic of
318 b the nomes or strains of the older musicians, Marsyas and Olym-
Symp. 215 c pus. From this they pass to the conservative Spartans and Cre¬
tans who use the oldest musical laws and then to the goodly
ancient kings Rhadamanthys and Minos. But Minos, says the
companion, was cruel and unjust. That, says Socrates, is an
Laws 706 AB Attic and tragic myth. Homer and Hesiod, more trustworthy
witnesses, tell a different tale.

318 e After blaspheming of the gods there is no greater impiety
od.xn?.^ than dispraise of good men, who are likest unto the gods. Ho-
Laws 624 ab mer pronounces the highest encomium on Minos when he calls
him the familiar friend of Zeus, by which he means the disciple,
Aesch. Prom. 62 for Zeus is for Homer a Sophist. The association of which
Homer speaks was a companionship in discourse, not the boon
320 a companionship of wine, for the laws of Crete, copied by those
Laws 637 of Sparta, prohibit the conviviality of intoxication and Minos

MINOS

427

was not so worthless a man as to practice himself what he pro¬
hibited by law for others.

Rhadamanthys was a good man enough since he was a pupil
of Minos, but Minos taught him not the entire royal art but
only the subsidiary branch which is concerned with the adminis¬
tration of justice. He was guardian of the law in the city while
Talos patrolled the entire island of Crete, visiting each village
thrice annually, with brazen tablets of the law, whence his
sobriquet, the Man of Bronze.

To like effect Hesiod portrays Minos as holding the scepter
(by which he means the education) of Zeus.

Minos’ evil reputation is due to Attic tragedy, the most popu¬
lar and soul-seducing of arts, far older than Thespis and Phryni-
chus, its supposed inventors. The early Attic tragedians gave
Minos his bad name because of the tribute which he exacted
from Athens. Let no man who cares for his reputation offend a
poet.

The fact that Minos’ Cretan laws remain unchanged proves
that he did find in them that which is. These ancient lawgivers
then were true shepherds of the people. We know what the
shepherd does for the body. Is it not disgraceful not to know
what the lawgiver and spiritual shepherd distributes and ap¬
portions to the soul whereby he makes it better?

320 B

On Laches 188 D
Gorg. 488 AB

320 C

Euthyd. 291 B
Polit. 305 B

320 D

321 A

Laws 638 D
Gorg. 502 B

320 E

321 B

On Polit. 275 A

HIPPARCHUS

Polit. 1263 b 2
Aristoph. Wasps
77-78

Laws 731 E

225 C 3
231 DE
230 E 3

227 C 8
228 A 7, 231 C 3,

232 B 3

On Phileb. 20 D

231 A 7
231 C 10
Infra, pp. 433-34

228 B £f.
Souilhe, XIII, 2,
47-51

229 A

Aristotle points out that a compound of Xos as, e.g., self-
loving, may be neutral or may express a shade of blame. The
author of the Hipparchus illustrates this elementary logical
truth by the word 4>CkoKtph-i]s, lover of gain. The style certainly,
and perhaps some Stoic and Aristotelian terms, mark the dia¬
logue as spurious. But there is nothing un-Platonic in the
thought.

Socrates abruptly proves to an anonymous friend that if «'p-
60s, gain, is taken in the bad sense nobody is really a lover of
gain, if in the good sense, everybody is. The interlocutor resists,
repeats the same objections, and is rather, he says, compelled
to accept the argument than convinced by it. But on the So-
cratic principle that all men desire the good, the conclusion is
inevitable that since gain in the higher sense must be good, or
it would not be true gain, all men are lovers-of-gain.

Isocrates, when emulating the Platonic ethics, makes much
of the point that only what is really and morally good can be
true gain or repdos. But we are hardly justified in affirming that
the author of the Hipparchus must have had him in mind. It is
worth noting that Socrates’ interlocutor once or twice tries to
divert the argument from ethics to political economy, by defin¬
ing gain as that which yields a pecuniary profit. We shall find
a similar transition to political economy in the Eryxias.

The most interesting and most frequently quoted page of the
little dialogue is the digression on Hipparchus, the son of Peisis-
tratus, who first brought the poems of Homer to Athens and
compelled the rhapsodists at the Panathenaea to recite them
<!£ uTToXiji/'ecos, as is still the practice. Hipparchus also composed
elegiac distichs, which, as specimens of his wisdom, like the
sayings of the seven wise men at Delphi, he inscribed on stelae
of Hermes at Athens, as, e.g.,

This is Hipparchus’s rede, go on thy way and be just

and

This is Hipparchus’s rede, never be false to thy friend.

428

THEAGES

Plato could hardly have written the intolerably clumsy and
scholastic first two sentences of the Theages, and the supersti¬
tious treatment in the last four pages of the dai monion of Socra¬
tes as a private oracle marks the dialogue as certainly un-Pla¬
tonic. The remaining ten pages are a plausible summary of some
of the ideas of the minor dialogues, and, together with the
Minos, might serve as a very simple introduction to the Pla¬
tonic ethics and politics.

Demodocus tells Socrates that it is easier to bring a boy into
the world than it is to educate him. His boy is ambitious to
become wise, and importunes his father to give him the means
of studying with some Sophist. Will Socrates advise? Advice,
says Socrates, is proverbially a sacred thing. But to be of any
avail there must first be agreement about its subject. What do
they mean by wise? Without that we may discover as we pro¬
ceed that we are not speaking of the same thing. The boy Thea¬
ges is presented and Socrates questions him in the manner of the
minor dialogues. He does not mean by wisdom the acquisition
of an elementary education, or the knowledge of any of the
special arts and crafts. He means the science of ruling men,
not in the manner of the practitioners of the special arts, but
as Aegisthus and Peleus and Periander and Archelaos ruled
over all the citizens. Socrates playfully interprets this to mean
that the young rascal wishes to be tyrant of Athens, and then
proposes that they deliberate together where they can find a
teacher of that larger wisdom that they have distinguished from
the specific knowledge or skill of the arts.

To determine in what precisely tyrants are wise, he drags in
rather abruptly first the line of “Euripides” quoted in Rep.
568 A, “Tyrants are wise by converse with the wise,” and then
a poem of Anacreon. Theages protests. He might pray to be
tyrant, and he might pray to be a god, but what he desires is to
govern not by force but to rule over willing citizens, as Themis-
tocles, Pericles, and Cimon did. To learn horsemanship we go

121 C

121 D

122 A
122 B

Laches 184-85

Epin. 973 A ff.

On Laches 190 B
Euthyd. 295 B 5

122 E

123 B-E

123 D

124 B— E

124 E ff.

125 A

On Charm. 158 D

125 E

Frag. 1 18 (Bergk)
Ale. II. 141
Gorg. 468 E

126 AB

43°

WHAT PLATO SAID

126 D

127 B

127 I>

On Euthyd. 273
ES

Prot. 316 C
128 B

On Lysis 204 BC
128 D

128 D-131

to horsemen, Socrates suggests, should we not go to statesmen
to learn the art of rule? But Theages has heard that Socrates is
wont to say that statesmen cannot teach the art in which they
excel to their own sons. That is to say, the author of the dia¬
logue has read the Protagoras and Menoy which he imitates, with
touches borrowed also from the Charmides and Euthydemus.

Demodocus thinks it would be a godsend for the boy if Socra¬
tes himself would undertake his teaching, but Socrates points
out that there are many better qualified teachers of good citizen¬
ship than he; Demodocus himself, who has held many offices,
and other Athenian statesmen, and if the boy scorns these, the
Sophists Prodicus, Gorgias, and Polus who make a “profession”
of educating young men and persuade the richest and best-
born youths to seek their society in preference to that of the
first citizens. Socrates disclaims such wisdom; he is an expert
only in love. Theages thinks that an evasion. Many of his age-
fellows have profited very quickly by Socrates' instruction. And
Socrates explains that this is due to the divine voice which at¬
tends him by the grace of God, and thereupon proceeds to en¬
large, with superstitious anecdotes, on the un-Platonic, Xeno-
phontic view of this private oracle which can be consulted even
by his friends.

THE RIVALS

The Rivals develops the familiar Platonic quest for the politi- onEuthyd. 291 b
cal or royal art as opposed to the particular arts into an interest¬
ing comparison of the all-round man, who has an encyclopaedic
cultural acquaintance with everything, and the specialist who is
master of one thing. There is nothing distinctly un-Platonic in
the thought and not much in the language. The grounds for its
rejection are the unplatonic inurbanity of the quarreling rivals,
the excess of ideas and points obviously derived from Plato,
the abrupt or awkward transitions by which they are intro¬
duced, and a few possible technicalities of Aristotelian or Stoic 138 bc
terminology.

Socrates narrates how, entering the school of Dionysius, the 132 a
teacher of letters, he saw two boys disputing about the theories
of Anaxagoras or Oenopides with the aid of diagrams and de- 132 b
scriptive movements of their hands and arms. Nudging with
his elbow one of two rival admirers who were watching the boys,
he asks, What great and fine thing is it that interests the lads
so much? Fine, nothing, the athletic personage whom he ad- on Laches i94d
dressed replied. They are prating about meteorology and talk- onPhaedo7oc
ing philosophic drivel. Why ask him? interposes the other ad- 132 c
mirer, a scrawny, lean-necked, anemic, sallow-faced figure. He 134 b
spends his life wrestling, filling his belly, and sleeping, and so 132 c
naturally despises philosophy. ReP. 4o4a

The two rivals thus represent in cruder form the antithesis
between the theoretical and the practical life embodied in the
Amphion and Zethus of Euripides so effectively quoted by Calli- 4s4 e a.
cles in the Gorgias . Socrates as usual insists that we must know 133 b
what a thing is before we can know whether it is honorable or on Laches 190 b
base — a good thing or not. What is philosophy? The encomiast Eutbyd. 307 bc
of philosophy defines the philosopher, with the aid of Solon's iichLissB
famous line, as the man who learns something new every day. Rep. 536 d
Philosophy then is polymathy, Socrates interprets. But after on aic. ii. i47 a
some wrangling between the rivals it is agreed that in gym- 133 e
nasties it is not many exercises but moderate and reasonable

431

43 2

WHAT PLATO SAID

toils that develop health and strength. What expert will tell
us what and how many studies it is best to sow and implant in
the mind?

135 a They are at a loss, and when Socrates asks more specifically
what studies would bring a man the reputation of a philosopher,
the sophisticated rival replies that the philosopher should learn
13s b all arts, but by preference those of the mind rather than the
135 c handicrafts. To . Socrates’ objection that it is impossible for one
135 d man to master two arts, let alone many, he counters with Aris¬
totle’s conception of the generally or liberally educated man
who knows only enough to understand the specialist and have
an opinion and contribute his advice. The all-round man re-
135 e sembles the pentathlete who cannot run as fast as the racer or
136 b box as well as the boxer, but is second best in every exercise.
But the good man is the useful man, objects Socrates. Precisely
where and how is the all-round second-best man more useful
136 e than the specialist? If the philosopher is in this sense the poly-
on Gorg. 486 c math, the philosopher, if it is not too rude a thing to say, would
seem useless. We must find some other formula for the philoso-

137 b pher than a jack-of-all-trades’ acquaintance with many mechan-
aic. 11. 147 b ical and banausic arts.

137 c A forced transition then leads on to the quest for the political
Gorg. 50s c art. 1 he man who can best chastise dogs is the man who knows
how to make dogs better. So the art of chastising men is identi¬
cal with the art of improving them and distinguishing the good
Gorg. 464 B 8 from the bad. But that is the art of administering justice — that
cieit. 408 b 5 is to say, justice itself. But that presupposes knowledge of men
On Charm. 159 b and hence self-knowledge, which is sophrosyne, sobriety. Justice
and sobriety then are different aspects of the same thing and,

138 b since states are well governed when wrongdoers are chastised,
symp. 209 a 7-8 are identical with the political art. Now the same principles

apply to the government and betterment of one man and of
138 c many, and justice, sobriety, the royal, the political, the tyranni-
On Pout. 258 d cal, the despotic, the economic art are one and the same. In

138 d this art the philosopher must indeed be able to have an opinion

and contribute advice. And in this it will not do for him to be
Gorg. 460 a second best and inferior to the expert. Philosophy then is not

139 a polymathy and acquaintance with the mechanical arts.

ERYXIAS

The inurbanities, the awkward transitions, the inartistic
management of the dialogue, the excess of Platonic reminis¬
cences, and some traces of later usage and terminology suffice to
prove the spuriousness of the Eryxias. It is not for that reason
contemptible. Its influence on Ruskin alone lends it consider¬
able significance for modern thought. It is the nearest approach
to a study of political economy to be found in extant classical
literature. Its discussion of the meaning and nature of wealth is
in effect a development of Socrates’ prayer at the close of the
Phaedrus : “May I deem the wise man the rich man.” The argu¬
ment introduces in succession the idea of value, value in and for
exchange, and value in and for use, and the economic conception
of value is deepened or, as some would say, confused by the
final insistence on the distinction between false and true
values.

Socrates and Eryxias meet Critias and Erasistratos, who has
just returned from Sicily, and ask of him the news. Erasistratos
opines that Sicily is a wasp’s nest which Athens should grasp
firmly and destroy rather than irritate by insufficient attacks.
The Sicilian ambassadors happening to pass, Erasistratos points
to one of them as the richest man in Sicily. But when he is
about to launch out upon a description of his wealth, Socrates
checks him by asking, What is the man’s character? He is the
wickedest as well as the wealthiest of Sicilians, is the reply.
And Socrates seizes the opportunity to introduce the idea of
comparative value and lead up to the edifying conclusion that
there are other values than material goods — health, for in¬
stance, or good judgment in the conduct of life. If happiness, as
Eryxias affirms, is the chief value, and happiness depends on
doing and faring well, it would appear that wisdom is wealth.
Eryxias opposes this by the argument that wisdom is worthless
if it cannot be exchanged for bread, and when Socrates retorts
that wisdom must surely have as great value in exchange as a

279 BC

392 AB

Xen. Hell. II. 32

392 BC

393 D

392 E

Gorg. 470 DE

393 A

393 B

393 E

394 A

On Charm. 173 D

394 B

4.13

434

WHAT PLATO SAID

394 cd fine house, if there were purchasers who preferred the wisdom,
On Meno 80 a he complains of the sophistry of Socratic dialectic, as interlocu-
.405 b tors do in the genuine dialogues. He seems to think, says Socra¬
tes, that it is a game of draughts in which the one who is beaten
cannot make a move. No sensible man will believe that the

395 D wisest are the richest, Eryxias insists. Critias intervenes with a
39s e boast that he can make Eryxias admit that material wealth is

not always a good. Their debate, Socrates says, turns on a thing
that the Greeks regard as the greatest of goods. Fathers bid

396 c their sons take thought to be rich, for you are worth what you

have. Disagreements about good and evil are the source of all
Euthyph. 7 c, 8 d quarrels. He proposes to aid them in determining their dif-

396 e feiences. Critias, by the arguments of the Euthydemus , shows

that material wealth may be an evil when it provides oppor-
39V a tunities for evil or foolish actions which poverty would restrict.

397 c Eryxias is unwilling to admit his defeat, and Socrates, to keep
Euthyd. 280 b 3 the peace, tells badly a rather pointless story how Prodicus,

maintaining in the Lyceum with other arguments the thesis of
Critias, was heckled by the questions of a captious and forward
On Meno 70 A youth. Prodicus admitted that virtue can be taught, and the

398 c boy, arguing that we do not pray to the gods for things that we

may learn from teachers, concludes that when Prodicus prays

398 d for happiness, which he says depends upon virtue, his prayers

399 a are ignorant and foolish. Before the indignant Prodicus can re¬

ply to this quibble, the director of the gymnasium drives him
out for talk unsuitable to the ears of youth. Socrates infers
that the reception of an argument depends on the esteem of the
audience for the speaker. In Prodicus’ case, the better reasoner
was expelled from the gymnasium as a Sophist. But as every-
399 c body knows that Critias is a statesman of weight, he can sustain
the same thesis with impunity. Erasistratos suspects this to be
on Lache^8D a Socrates disclaims any such intention and suggests that
B 10, 190 B they go back to first principles and define wealth.

\\ealth, says Erasistratos, is just what ordinary men suppose

399 e it to be, the possession of many useful things, utilities (xpjjjuara).

But is the token money of the Carthaginians and other tribes a
400 a leally useful thing? Among the Scythians a house is not useful

400 e because they do not use houses. But the conclusion that things

ERYXIAS

435

we use are utilities and therefore property or wealth, is met by
the objection that we use conversation and arguments, which
are obviously not property. Perhaps a consideration of the pur¬
pose of property will help. If there were no disease we should
have no use for medicine to free us from it. If we could live
without food and drink we should have no use for the money
that procures them. But neither these nor other subtleties can
convince Eryxias that gold and silver is not wealth and prop¬
erty. Yet again, if the means of procuring what the body needs
are utilities and property, then the knowledge and professional
skill by which a man makes his living is wealth, and those who
know most are the richer. And further, as a horse is useful only
to him who knows how to use it, so all wealth is utility and prop¬
erty only for those who can use it rightly. It follows that wealth
is wealth only to good and honorable men. Critias thinks he
would be mad to believe such a paradox. But he would gladly
hear Socrates complete his proof that gold and silver are not
wealth. Critias listens to me, says Socrates, as people do to
rhapsodes who recite Homer, without believing a word of what
is said.

Tools as well as materials are useful for building a house, and
generalizing, we may say that not only the direct means to any
end are utilities, but the sine qua non' s , the things that supply
indispensable conditions. But that will commit us to an infinite
series and to other paradoxical conclusions. The sense of hear¬
ing is a sine qua non of teaching, and hence of the virtue or ex¬
cellence that is an equivalent of wealth. And again, ill-gotten
gains may supply the sine qua non of good ends and so be
utilities. Still more subtly we may argue that ignorance is the
precondition and sine qua non of learning and hence is a
utility.

But, to dismiss this puzzling question of the identity of the
useful with utilities or wealth, which is the happier and better
man, he who needs most or fewest things? The sick obviously
need more things for the body than the well. We have the most
needs and desires when we are at our worst. All desires are
wants, the lack of something. In so far as we do not want things
and do not need them they are not for us utilities or wealth. And

401 B

401 BC

Lysis 220 E-221 A
Rep. 341 E

401 D

402 C

402 DE

403 A

Euthyd. 280-81
403 B

Xen. Oecon. I. 8
Meno. 88

403 C

403 D

403 E

Phaedo 99 A 6

B3

404 A

On Lysis 219 C
404 C

404 D

405 A

Euthyd. 277 BC

4°5 C

Gorg. 492 E
Xen. Mem. I. 6.
10

405 DE
Phileb. 45 E 6
Laws 734 B

4 36

WHAT PLATO SAID

consequently the rich, those who have the greatest number of
utilities, that is, of things that are useful to them, have the
greatest number of needs for their bodies and are in the worst
condition.

Despite the quibbling subtleties of some of the arguments,
which we have abbreviated, it will be seen that the dialogue is
full of suggestions on the relations of economic concepts to
ethics and psychology. Its conclusion may seem to point to the
Stoic interpretation of the paradoxes of the Gorgias.

AXIOCHUS

The spuriousness of the Axiochus is sufficiently proved by its
vocabulary and its use of commonplace Stoic and Epicurean
topics of the post-Platonic literature of consolations.

Socrates narrates how Cleinias, the son of Axiochus, overtook 364 a-c
him by the Ilissus when he was on his way to the Cynosarges
gymnasium, and summoned him to the deathbed of Axiochus
that he might console the dying man with philosophic discourses
and reconcile him to death. The dialogue between Socrates and
Axiochus consists mainly of edifying and hortatory speeches by
Socrates. Our life is but a sojourn and the fear of death (as 365 b
Lucretius, Cicero, Dio Chrysostomus, Hazlitt, and many others 36s d
are to say later) is a confusion of thought. We attribute our
own sensations to the corpse. You shrink in terror from cor¬
ruption and the worm and forget that you will not be there, 365 de
even as before your birth no evil happened to you for there was
no you to whom it could happen. This Epicurean topic is, some
critics think inconsistently, blended with Platonic idealism. We
are not the earthy body but the soul, an immortal life shut in a
mortal prison. Death is a release frorn many evils. — Why then 366 a
does Socrates continue to live, if he is so wise? — Socrates as 366ldo62AB
usual disclaims all pretensions to wisdom of his own, but pro- on Euthyph. 3 c
ceeds to recite a litany of the miseries of life, which he has 0n ^ E
heard from Prodicus— for pay. A multitude of teachers and ty- 366 c ^ M<j
rants oppress the child. Wars and tiresome business distract ^saco
our riper years. And in old age nature, a strict creditoi, seizes 367 b
as pledges our sight or hearing or other faculties and reduces us
to second childhood. Hence, as the poets repeat, the favorites f^c7
of the gods die young. The topics and the poetical quotations
of the conventional consolation follow, perhaps copied from 368 c
some earlier writer. All trades and professions, and most of all 368 d
the politics of ungrateful democracies are full of weariness, en- 369 a
nui, and disappointed hopes. Death, as Prodicus epigrammati- 369 b
cally puts it, concerns neither the living nor the dead. It is
nothing, and our fears are vain.

437

43 8

WHAT PLATO SAID

369 d Axiochus thinks that all this is plausible rhetoric and com¬
monplace. What he fears is the loss of the blessings of life. But

369 e Socrates reminds him again that the confusion of his thought
365 d is attributing sensation to the corpse. Moreover, he urges, pass-

Rep. 608 d big to another theme, the soul is immortal. Unless a spirit of
divinity dwelt in man, how could his mind apprehend the
courses of the stars and fix in indelible characters the phenome-

370 c na of the cosmos for the contemplation of all the centuries to

come. Axiochus will depart not to death but to immortality, to
purer joys, not mingled and contaminated with the mortal
body. Liberated from this prison-house he will dwell apart in a
world where there will be no toil, no groans, no age, but a life of
blessed calm, and he will be freer to contemplate nature and
370 e truth. Axiochus is as suddenly and completely convinced by
372 a these consolatory commonplaces as is Claudio in Shakespeare's
Measure for Measure , III, 1, and answers almost in the words
of Claudio:

I humbly thank you.

To sue to live I find I seek to die,

And seeking death find life: let it come on.

The dialogue was a favorite in the Renaissance which found
in it a breviary of the first book of Cicero's Tusculans and of the
literature of consolations. Montaigne however (II, 10) says, “I
find myself without any relish for Plato's Axiochus .” It was
translated by Etienne Dolet and by Rodolphus Agricola. A
separate reprint of Marsilio Ficino's Latin version was current
in Paris in Shakespeare's youth, and may be the source of the
speech that reconciles Claudio to death in Shakespeare's Meas¬
ure for Measure . In any case the speech and the sudden con¬
version of Claudio by it supply a good illustration of the Axio¬
chus .

SISYPHUS

The Sisyphus is obviously not by Plato. But it is a not alto¬
gether unintelligent, though somewhat confused discussion of a
topic much debated in later antiquity, the nature and implica¬
tions of deliberation or counsel. Socrates tells Sisyphus that he
missed a brilliant lecture yesterday. Sisyphus was in conference
with the rulers of Pharsalus, deliberating with them and con¬
tributing his advice to their deliberations. Good counsel, Soc¬
rates thinks, is too large a subject for him. But counsel itself,
deliberation, precisely what is it? Is it talking of what you don't
know, guessing and extemporizing whatever occurs to you ? No,
replies Sisyphus. In deliberation you know a part and a part
not yet. On this explanation Socrates brings to bear a variation
of the “eristic argument” of the Meno . Good counsel, then, is a
quest, a seeking. Do men seek what they know, or what they
don't know? Strictly speaking, what they don't know. The ge¬
ometer does not inquire what a cube or a diagonal is, for he
knows. He seeks the length of the diagonal, the solution of the
problem of the doubling of the cube. So Empedocles and other
meteorologists do not inquire if air exists, but whether it is
finite or infinite. They seek, then, what they do not know. But
on second thoughts it appears that we do not deliberate about
what we do not know. The unmusical man does not deliberate
about music. Deliberation and inquiry or search therefore are
not the same. But the council yesterday was seeking what is
best for the state. But if they did not know, would it not have
been better to learn of those who do know rather than to waste
the day in talk? But again, even if we concede that deliberation
or counsel is more than guesswork, how can it be maintained
that some men are better counselors than others, as carpenters
excel carpenters and flute-players flute-players? Counsel deals
with the future. But the future has not yet come into existence
— it is not, it is nothing. An archer cannot excel another archer
if there is no mark to shoot at. What can men mean by saying

387 e
387 c

387 CD

387 e

Isoc. XII. 30

388 A

80 DE
388 C

Rep. 510 C

388 E

389 A

389 C

389 E

Ar. Eth. Nic. 1142

a 31

390 B

On Charm. 171
DE, 172 D

390 C

Prot. 319 CD

390 DE

391 A

439

440

WHAT PLATO SAID

39i D

On Meno 98 AB

Eth. Nic. 1142 b

s fif¬

th at one man is a better counselor than another? We shall have
to postpone the answer to this question. With all its sophistry,
the dialogue glances at some real questions of the practical
criticism of life and of a skeptical philosophy. The uncertainty
of the future is proverbial throughout classical Greek literature.
The difference between knowledge and opinion is a standing
problem in Plato. And the exact nature of practical sagacity as
opposed to pure theoretic or scientific knowledge is still as hard
to define as Aristotle found it. The date and the authorship of
the dialogue are uncertain.

DEMODOCUS

The Demodocus is not, strictly speaking, a Socratic dialogue
at all. There is one anonymous speaker who sets forth the heads
of a skeptical discussion of four controversial topics somewhat in
the manner of the Surcroi X0701 or twin arguments which it is now
the fashion to regard as a sophistic production of the end of the
fifth century or the beginning of the fourth.

The first is a cruder treatment of the theme of the Sisyphus.
Counselors do not know, for they differ from one another. If
one of them did know, his counsel would make that of the others
superfluous, and if those whose votes decide which counsel to
accept are competent to judge that, they can judge the policy
itself directly without resorting to counsel. In any case the fu¬
ture is unknowable.

The second is a paradox in refutation of the proverbial Greek
verse “Do not give judgment till you have heard both sides.”
The first speaker either has or has not proved his case and made
plain the truth. If he has, what need to hear more?

The third is an elaboration of a point just touched upon once
or twice in Plato, that he who fails to persuade another is de¬
feated by him. If a friend refuses to lend you money blame not
him but yourself for your lack of tact and skill in dealing with
men.

In the fourth the speaker overhears an anonymous discussion
on the contention that, since quickness of perception is a good
thing, it is unreasonable to rebuke a man for giving his trust too
quickly. And if the fault consists in putting faith in anybody at
random, the question arises whether friends and kin are not
sometimes as untrustworthy as strangers, and whether in that
case they are not even more “faithless” than the strangers.

These and similar quibbles so bewilder the speaker that he no
longer knows in whom to put faith and whether it is better to
trust the trustworthy who know or your friends and kin.

381 BCD

380 D

381 AB

381 CD ff.

382 C

On Sis. 391 AB
382 E ff.

384 A

384 B
384 c

On Phaedo 90 D
384 E
385C
38s D

386 AB

On Laws 730 C
386 C

PERI DIICAIOU

The little anonymous dialogue on the just or justice reads like

372 a a school exercise in imitation of Platonic “dialectic.” The eye

is the organ with which we see; we weigh with scales; and we
determine disputes about greater and less by the art of measur¬
ing. Judges decide what is just and unjust, and their instrument

373 e is speech, Aoy os. The heavy, by definition, is that which sinks

in the scales. What, by definition, is the just? We cannot say.

374 a Well, then, are men unjust voluntarily or involuntarily ? Volun¬

tarily. But the poet says, No man is willingly bad or unwillingly
Ar. Met. 983 a 3 blessed. The poet may be wrong, for, as the proverb says, poets
tell many falsehoods. In this case the poet can be proved to be
374 c right. To deceive and do harm is thought unjust, but not to
0nIcnto349A deceive and harm enemies. Deception then is both just and un¬
just. Plow shall we distinguish the just from the unjust decep¬
tion as we distinguish the right eye or ear from the left? To de¬
ceive at the proper time and right occasion is just. But it is
Prot’ 3S3^5~c knowledge that determines the right occasion in every art. Jus-
Meno87c-89A tJce js knowledge and injustice ignorance. But nobody is
soph. 228 c willingly ignorant. So the poet was right.

PERI ARETES

The 7 repi a perfjs is a similar exercise, in the form of a discus¬
sion between Socrates and a caretaker of horses, on the problem
m 378B4-c74= of the Meno,> Can virtue be taught? The imitations of the Meno
eno 94 3 1 and of the Protagoras are obvious. Some sentences and phrases
Meno99?D744 are copied verbatim.

442

°OpoL (DEFINITIONS)

The so-called "Open are a collection of some one hundred and
eighty definitions excerpted or paraphrased from various
sources. About twenty may suggest passages in Plato, and not
more than ten are plain reminiscences of Platonic sentences. A
few seem to imply acquaintance with the terminology of Aris¬
totle, and there are possibly faint traces of Stoic ideas. Some of
the definitions seem to be criticized in Aristotle's Topics .

The "0 pot apparently were included in Thrasyllus’ Tetralo¬
gies . The field for conjecture is open. The work may be a prod¬
uct of the Academy contemporary with or a little later than
Aristotle, or it may have been compiled at almost any time be¬
fore Thrasyllus.

443

HALCYON

The pretty little trifle entitled the Halycon is printed by
Hermann among the Platonic Apocrypha . It is sometimes at¬
tributed to Lucian and is therefore translated in Walter Pater's
Marius the Epicurean . It is an improvement of the text of Ham¬
let's, “There are more things in heaven and earth," etc., or of
the challenges to puny man in the Book of Job. It will appeal
to those who today argue that telepathy is no more “wonderful"
than wireless telegraphy. Socrates and Chaerephon hear the cry
of the halcyon on the beach at Phaleron, and discuss the legend
and the beauty of halcyon days. Chaerephon (like Phaedrus in
the Phaedrus , 229 C) asks Socrates if he believes in these stories
of metamorphoses, and Socrates discourses on the text of human
limitations and the infinite powers of God or the universe. Is it
not harder to bring halcyon days out of such a storm as we ex¬
perienced day before yesterday than to transform a woman into
a bird? Even as between men there are incredible differences in
on Meno 86 b 5 power. The achievements of any expert seem miraculous to the
ignorant layman. Socrates will not dogmatize about the power
of the gods nor affirm or deny the transformations of the halcyon
and the nightingale, but will transmit to his children and to his
two wives, Xanthippe and Myrto, the legend as he learned it
from his fathers.

444

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44^

WHAT PLATO SAID

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Ueberweg-Praechter = D/> Philosophie des Altertums. Berlin, 1926.

Wil amo witz = Platon. 2 vols. 2d ed. Berlin, 1920.

Zeller — Die Philosophie der Griechen. Zweiter Teil, erste Abteilung. Vierte
Auflage. Leipzig, 1889.

THE LIFE OF PLATO

NOTES

Collected: Ancient sources: Rhein. Mus., XLIX, 72 fF., Plato’s epistles;
Philodemus, in Academicorum philosophorum index Herculanensis , ed. S.
Mekler; Apuleius De dogmate Platonis; Diogenes Laertius, Book III. Sepa¬
rate edition by Breitenbach, Buddenhagen, Debrunner, F. von de Muhll
(Basel, 1907); Olympiodorus, Vita Platonis, in Westermann’s Bioypa<f>OL, pp.
382 fF.; Anon., Vita Platonis , in ibid., pp. 388 fF.; Prolegomena ad Platonis
philosophiam , in Vol. VI of Hermann’s ed. of Plato, pp. 196 fF.; Suidas, s.v.
UXcltcov in Westermann, op. cit ., p. 396 fF.

Modern sources: Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca , III4, 57 fF.; Zeller, pp.
389 fF.; F. Ast, Platons Lehen und Schriften (Leipzig, 1816); K. F. Hermann,
Geschichte und System d. Plat. Philos. (Heidelberg, 1839), 1—1^6; Ueberw.-

Pr., pp. 179-80, 190, 65* fF.; C. Steinhart, Platons Lehen , Vol. IX of H. Mul¬
ler’s translation of Plato (Leipzig, 1873); Grote, I, 246 fF.; A. E. Chaignet,
La vie et les Scrits de Platon (Paris, 1871); C. Huit, La vie et V oeuvre de Platon
(2 vols.; Paris, 1893); Th. Gomperz, II, 249 fF.; Ritter, I, 1-1915 Eduard
Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums , V, 275 fF., 321 fF., 332 fF., 345 fF., and more
specially 350 fF.; G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries , with Shorey re¬
view in Class. Phil., XXVII (1932), 105-6.

Any one of the biographies by Zeller, Chaignet, Grote, or Ritter is practical¬
ly exhaustive. I have not thought it necessary to reprint all of the material
so easily accessible. I select and emphasize what will best prepare the reader
to understand “what Plato says.”

Anecdotes: I have a practically complete collection which it is impossible
to print in this volume.

Historical novel: C f. Shorey on Howald, Class. Phil., XIX (1924), 379-81,
on Mazon, ibid., XXV I (1931), 215-17, on Jean Humbert, ibid., p. 225; Sten-
zel, Platon der Erzieher, pp. 90 fF.

Herodotus and Thucydides: The influence of Herodotus would be the theme
of a dissertation, but is too obvious to need illustration here. For Thucydides
cf. Ueberw.-Pr., p. 259; Christ, Gesch. d. griech. Lit.6, I, 491; Sokrates, IV
(1916), 617; Rivista di filologia, XXXII (1904), 225-30; Shorey, TAPA,
XXIV, 66 fF.

Orphic .... literature: Diels3, II, 163 fF., collects the Platonic passages.
The Index of Kern’s Orphica, p. 369, has a column of references to Plato.
Zeller, p. 29, n. 3, cites Phaedo 69 C; Rep. 363 C, 364 B; Laws 782 C. Cf.
further Joel, Geschichte der antiken Philosophic, pp. 152 fF.; P. Frutiger, Les
mythes de Platon, pp. 261 fF.; Cornford, “Plato and Orpheus,” Class. Rev.,
XVII (1903), 433 fF.; Ritter, Phaedrus, nn. (Apelt, II, 129); Dorfler, “Die
Orphik in Platons Gorgias,yy Wien. Stud., XXXIII (1911), 177-212; Gomperz,
III, 37; Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 89-90.

447

448

WHAT PLATO SAID

Apelt (Platonische Aufsatze , p. 83) takes the sane view that Plato's Orph-
ism is purely literary.

Epicharmus and Sophron: Cf. Diog. L. III. 18; Reich, Der Mimus, I, 380;
Norwood, Greek Co?nedy , pp. 78, 87-88; John M. S. MacDonald, Character
Portraiture in Epicharmus , Sophron and Plato (Sewanee, Tenn., 1931).

Religion of the imaginative reason: Cf. Shorey in E. H. Sneath, The Evolu¬
tion of Ethics (Yale Press, 1927), pp. 235-66.

Pre-Socratics: The texts of the pre-Socratics are collected in Diels, in Bur¬
net’s Early Greek Philosophy 2, and less completely in P. Tannery, Pour I'his-
toire de la science hellene 2 (1930). There are sufficient bibliographies of the
enormous literature in Zeller-Nestle6, Vol. I; Zeller-Nestle, Grundriss , p. 30,
and Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 38 *-50*. For the present writer’s interpretation cf.
AJP , XXI (1900), 200-216, and the article “Philosophy, Greek,” in Has¬
tings, op. cit.

Sophists: The facts and the immense literature about the Sophists are
sufficiently given in any one of the following: Zeller6, I, 2, pp. 1278-1333 ff.;
Zeller-Nestle, Grundriss , pp. 1 13-14; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 111-29 and 5 1 *—56*;
Joel, Geschichte der antiken Philosophic (Tubingen, 1921), pp. 642-727. The
texts are collected by Diels3, II, 218-345; and less critically but conveniently
by Mullach, II, 130-46. Cf. further Nestle’s edition of the Protagoras , Ein-
leitung, pp. 1-38; Jowett, II, 107 and IV, 286-87 ff-; Mill, pp. 246 ff.; Benn,
Greek Philosophers, pp. 66 ff*., 89; Sidgwick, E. J. Phil., IV, 288-306; Shorey on

H. Gomperz, Class. Phil., VIII, 239; Johannes Mewaldt, Kulturkampf der
Sophisten (Tubingen, 1928).

Epigrams: Cf. the sensible observations of Pierre Waltz, Bude Anthologie,

I, xii ff, and Rafaelo del Re, “Gli epigrammi di Platone,” Athenaeum , IX
(1931), 497-541.

Socrates: For an exhaustive literature on Socrates in general cf.II. K. Bifou-
kLStjs, TI 8Lktj too Sc oKparovs (Berlin, 1918), pp. 309-14, and Ueberw.-Pr., pp.
56*— 59*. Cf. further Zeller, pp. 44-232; Zeller-Nestle, pp. 117-27; K. Joel,
Der echte und d. xenophont. Sokrates (2 vols.; Berlin, 1893-1901); Gesch. d.
antiken Philos ., I, 730 ff.; H. Maier, Sokrates: Sein JVerk und seine geschicht-
liche Stellung (Tubingen, 1913); A. Busse, Sokrates (“Die grossen Erzieher,”
hrsg. v. R. Lehmann, Vol. VII) (Berlin, 1914); E. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altert.,
IV, 435-62; J. Stenzel, art. “Sokrates” in Pauly-Wiss., Ill, A, Sp. 811-90.
For the present writer’s interpretation of Socrates cf. art. “Socrates” in New
Internat. Encyc. (1904); “The Question of the Socratic Element in Plato,”
Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy (1926), pp. 576-
83; review of A. E. Taylor’s Varia Socratica in Class. Phil., VI (1911), 361;
cf. ibid., VII (1912), 89; review of E. Horneffer’s Der j tinge Platon in ibid.
XVII (1922), 173-75 ; review of E. Dupreel’s La ISgende socratique et les sources
de Platon in ibid., pp. 268-71. Cf. also infra, notes on the Apology, Crito , and
Phaedo, passim, and on the Gorgias.

Moral and religious ideal: Seneca Ep. VI. 5, “Plato et Aristoteles et omnis
in diversum itura sapientium turba plus ex moribus quam ex verbis Socratis
traxit.”

THE LIFE OF PLATO— NOTES

449

Wisdom of the East: There is no evidence that Plato had actually read any 26
Oriental or Egyptian book, and the surmise that definite philosophic ideas
may have been transmitted by travelers, trade, and interpreters remains an
improbable conjecture. The entire erudite and to some readers fascinating
literature about oriental influence in Greek philosophy is uncritical. It is re¬
jected by the most sober-minded historians. An attempt to criticize it here
would involve me in logomachy and lead to no result. It would be necessary
to take up one by one the “parallels” that have been alleged and demonstrate
their insufficiency. Such a procedure would weary without convincing the
uncritical, and the critical do not need it. It is enough to repeat that Plato’s
use of the imagery of mysticism is purely literary, never superstitious, and
that his writings need no other explanation than themselves and the Greek
authors that he may be presumed to have read. Further discussion of this
topic, then, may be reserved for more technical studies. Cf. Hoffmann, Ap¬
pendix to Zeller5, p. 1101; Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , p. 19; Friedlander

I, 37 and II, 244, 609, 617; H. H. Schaeder, Die Antike , IV (1928), 226-65;
Zeller, pp. 412 ff.; Zeller-Nestle6, I, 21-52; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 27-28, 37* ff.;
Joel, pp. 7 ff. The fancy that Plato borrowed from the Old Testament or
from the theosophies of India belongs to the history of Platonism.

Megarians: Cf. Zeller, pp. 244 ff.; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 155 ff., 62*; Gomperz, 26

II, 170 ff.; C. M. Gillespie, “On the Megarians,” Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos .,
XXIV (1 91 1 ), 218-41. Cf. also his article, “The Logic of Antisthenes,” ibid.,
XXVI (1913), 479 ff.; XXVII (1914), 17 ff.; Campbell, The “ Theaetetus ” of
Plato , pp. xxxiii ff.; P. Janet, Essai sur la dialectique de Platon , pp. 28 ff.;
Shorey, Diss ., p. 10, n. 1 and p. 43, n. 4.

Academy : On the site cf. Frazer, Pausanias , II, 389 ff.; Bursian, Geographic 28
von Griechenland , I, 323; Wachsmuth, Athen im Alterthum , I, 255 ff., 262 ff.;

W. Judeich, Topographie von Athen (1931), pp. 412 ff.; Gomperz, II, 270-71
and III, 307.

Legal process: Wilamowitz, Philol. Unters ., pp. 263 ff., 279 ff.; Natorp in 29
Pauly-Wissowa, I, 1134; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 184; P. Foucart, Les associations
religieuses chczles Grecs . Gomperz (III, 308) denies the “incorporation.”

Unhealthy site: Zeller, p. 416, n. 2; Porphyry De abstin. I. ^6; Aelian IX. 10.

Cf. on Rep. 591 C (Loeb).

Teaching in the Academy: Zeller, pp. 416 ff.; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 184-85.

On the Academy as a school cf. Grote, I, 255 ff.; Zeller, pp. 420 ff., 982 ff.; 30
Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 341 ff.; Ritter, pp. 187 ff. Plato does not, like Isocrates
(XV. 93), give us a list of his students. The chief names mentioned in the
tradition are Aristotle; Speusippus, Plato’s nephew; Xenocrates, who suc¬
ceeded Speusippus as chief of the Academy; Dion; Eudoxus the astronomer;
Heracleides Ponticus, a favorite author of Cicero; Philippus of Opus, said
to have edited the Laws; Hermodorus of Syracuse, said to have trafficked in
Plato’s writings; and, very doubtfully, the orators Demosthenes, Hypereides,
and Lycurgus. The tradition also speaks of two women students, one of whom
wore men’s garments.

45°

WHAT PLATO SAID

30 Mathematical sciences: For the inscription aycc o^eTpTjTos elcrcrco cf.

Philoponus in De anima 117. 27; David, Pro!ego?nena philosophiae, p. 5, 13;
David schol. in Arist. 26 a it; Elias in Categorias prooemium , p. 118, 18 and
p. 1 19, 4; Olympiodori Prolegomena 9. 1 ; Tzetzes, Chil., VIII, 973. Cf. Zeller,
p. 41 1, n. 3; Ritter, I, 124; Friedlander, I, 107.

Scientific research: Cf. Natorp in Pauly-Wiss., I, 1136; Grote, Plato , I,
255; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 184-85, 20*; Ritter, Platons Stellung zu den Aufgaben
der Naturwis sense haft, p. 61 ; P. Wendland, Entwicklung and Motive der Plat.
Staaislehre , p. 219; Usener, “Organisation d. wissensch. Arbeit,” Preuss.
Jahrb ., LIII (1884), 1-25; Vortr. u. Aufs ., pp. 69-102.

Denied by scholars: Cf. E. Howald, Die Plat. Akademie a. d. moderne Uni-
versitas litterarum (Bern, 1921); Kurt Singer, Platon der Grander , p. 183;
Erich Frank, Plato a. d. sogenannten Pythagoraer , pp. 7-8.

32 Isocrates: Cf. Shorey in Hastings, op. cit ., VII, 438-39; in the New Inter-
nat. Encyc ., XII, 426; and in Class. Phil., V (1910), 514; H. Gomperz, “Iso-
krates und die Sokratik,” Wiener Stad., XXVII (1905), 163-207; Friedlander,
I, 129; Raeder, p. 137; W. H. Thompson, Phaedrus, Appen. II; Ritter, I, 209;
C. D. Adams, Class. Phil., VII, 343-50; Dies, La transposition platonicicnne,
pp. 272 ff.

35 Xenophon: Cf. Shorey in New Internat. Encyc .

Supposed enmity: Boeckh, De simultate quae Plat, cam Xen. intercessisse
fertur ; Diog. L. III. 34; Aulus Gellius XIV. 3.

Literature: Cf. infra, p. 462.

37 Antisthenes: Zeller, pp. 281 ff., 289 ff. Diog. L. VI. i; Natorp in Pauly-
Wiss., I, 2538-45; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 167, 63*.

Mullach: Frag. phil. Graec., II, 261-93.

40 Tlwieen epistles: For a survey of the entire question of the epistles with
bibliography cf. Raeder, “Ueber die Echtheit der Platonischen Briefe,” Rhein.
Mas., LXI (1906), 427-71, 511-42; C. Ritter, Neae Untersuchungen iiber Pla¬
ton (Miinchen, 1910), pp. 327-424; Platons Gesetze , Kommentar (Leipzig,
1896), pp. 367 ff.; O. Apelt, Platon: Samtliche Dialoge (1921), Vol. VI;
Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 88 *-89*; J. Souilhe, Platon: OEuvres completes, ed. Bude;
(Paris, 1926), XIII, Part I; H. Gomperz, Platons Selbstbiographie (Berlin,
1928). For the philosophical digression in the seventh epistle cf. A. E. Taylor,
“The Analysis of CTricm^ in Plato’s Seventh Epistle,” Mind, XXI (1912),
347-70; O. Apelt, Platons Briefe iibersetzt und erldutert: Samtliche Dialoge,
Vol. VI, pp. 139-41 ; Wilhelm Andreae, “Die philosophischen Probleme in den
Platonischen Briefen,” Philologus, LXXVIII (1923), 46 ff.; C. Ritter, “Phi-
lippos von Opus und die philosophische Einlage im siebenten Platonbrief,”
Philol. Woch ., XLIX (1929), 522-24; Glenn R. Morrow, “The Theory of
Knowledge in Plato’s Seventh Epistle,” Philos. Rev., XXXVIII (1929), 326-
49; J. Stenzel, “Ueber d. Aufbau d. Erkenntnis im 7. Plat. Briefe,” Jahresb. d.
Philol. Vereins zu Berlin, Sokrates, IX (1921), 63-84.

For further literature and the point of view of the present writer cf. my
review of Hackforth’s The Authorship of the Platonic Epistles in the Nation,
XCVII (1913), 460-61; Class. Weekly, 1915, pp. 173-74; review of O. Im-

THE LIFE OF PLATO— NOTES

45 1

.nisch’s Der erste Platon. Brief in Class . Phil., VIII (1913), 387-88; “Note on
the Sixth Platonic Epistle,” ibid., X (1915), 87-88; review ofE. Howald’s Die
Brief e Platons in ibid., XVIII (1923), 361; note on “Plato Ep. IV. 320 D,”
ibid., XXI (1926), 257-58; “Statistics of Style in the Seventh Platonic
Epistle,” ibid., p. 258; review of Post’s Thirteen Epistles of Plato in ibid., pp.
280-81; review of J. Souilhe’s Platon: QLuvres completes. Tome XII J, ire par-
tie: Lettres, in ibid., XXII (1927), 107-8; review of F. Novotny’s Platonis
epistulae commentariis illustratae in ibid., XXV (1930), 292-93; review of P.
Mazon’s Sur tine lettre de Platon in ibid., XXVI (1931), 215-17.

Too silly for serious consideration: Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., X (1915), 87-88.

It cannot be saved by Professor L. A. Post’s fancy, approved by Professor
Taylor, that /ccuxep 7 kpuv &v (322 D 5) is a quotation of Soph., frag. 260 (ed.
Pearson) (239 N.). That jingle is a commonplace. Cf. Norwood, Greek Com -
edy, p. 310; Aesch. Ag. 1619; Blaydes on Aristoph. Acharn. 222; Nubes 129.

Relations with contemporaries: Cf. Field, passim; Zeller, p. 418; Grote, I, so
260; Diog. L. III. 23-24. He is said to have been a friend of Timotheus and
to have been the only Athenian who dared to defend in court the accused gen¬
eral Chabrias.

Latest phase of his philosophy: This topic will be more fully discussed else¬
where. Meanwhile cf. Shorey, Diss. (1884), pp. 31 ff., “De ideis atque nu-
meris”; Recent Platonism (1888), passim; Unity, pp. 82 ff.; Class. Phil.,
XXII (1927), 213-18; Raeder, pp. 424-26; Taylor, pp. 503 ff.; Taylor, Tim.,
pp. 76 ff.; Zeller, pp. 946 ff.; Stenzel, Studien zur Entwicklung der Plat. Dia-
lektik and Zahl und Gestalt , with Shorey review in Class. Phil., XIX (1924),
38i"83*

Little claim to authenticity: Cf. esp. J. J. Bernouilli, Griechische Ikonogra- 53
phie, II, 18-34; C. Ritter, Philologus , LXVIII (1909), 336-43; Platon , I, 178-
36; Fr. Poulsen, “A New Portrait of Plato,” Jour. Hell. Stud., XL (1920),
190-96; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 180, for additional literature.

Plato's character: Cf. Zeller, pp. 427 ff.; Ritter, I, 163 ff.; Ueberw.-Pr., pp.
180, 66 *-67*

THE WRITINGS OF PLATO

NOTES

58 We possess all writings : For unimportant alleged quotations from lost dia¬

logues, cf. Chaignet, p. 96, and Zeller, II, I4, 437, n. 1, on Menander II. ’Etl-
deucr., c. 6; Diog. L. III. 62.

Ancient critics rejected:

Diog. L. III. 62 rejects: Eryxias , Alcyon , Sisyphus , AxiochuSy Deinodocus .
Epinomis (Diog. L. III. 37; Suidas s.v. Prolegg. in Plat. c. 25).

Alcihiades II {A then. XI. 506 c).

Anterastai (doubted by Thrasyllus in Diog. L. IX. 37).

Hipparchus ( Aelian Var. Hist. VIII. 2, doubted).

Phaedo (Asclepius on Ar. Met. A 9, 991 b 3, [ed. Hayduck, pp. 90, 23 ff.];
Anthol. Pal.y IX, 358).

Republic and Laws (rejected by Proclus Olympiod. Prolegg. c. 26; but cf.
Zeller, 474, n. 3).

Definitions ( Prolegg . c. 26; he also considers as universally rejected: Sisy¬
phus y De?nodocuSy Alcyony Eryxias; not included in Thrasyllus’ tetralogies).
Be justo and De virtute (not included in Thrasyllus’ tetralogies, Diog. L.
III. 56 ff.).

Cf. Zeller, p. 441, n. 1; Raeder, pp. 21-22; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 195.

H. Alline, Histoire du texte de Platon (Paris, 1913), pp. 36 ff.

Possibly spurious:

Ion is rejected by Windelband-Goedeckemeyer, Ritter. Zeller doubts it.
Theages is rejected by Croiset, Zeller, Raeder, Windelband-Goedeckemeyer,
Wilamowitz, Taylor, Nestle.

Hippias Major by Wind.-Goedeck., Jowett, Gomperz, Pohlenz, Wilamowitz.
Zeller doubts it.

Menexenus by Ed. Schwartz, Hermes , XXXV (1900), 124-26; Ivo Bruns,
Das lit. Portr.y pp. 356-60. Zeller doubts it.

Alcibiades I by Raeder, Ueberw., Wilamowitz, Taylor. Croiset and Zeller
doubt it.

Minos by Ueberw.-Pr., Ritter, Zeller, Croiset, Wind.-Goedeck.

Cleitophon by Wind.-Goedeck., Ritter, Zeller, Croiset, Ueberw.-Pr.
Hipparchus by Wind.-Goedeck., Ritter, Zeller, Croiset, Raeder.

By Grote: Passim.

Chaignet: Pp. 105 ff.

Zeller: P. 475, n. 3; cf. p. 976, n. 2.

U eberweg-Praechter: Pp. 195-99, 69* ^ Cf. Raeder, pp. 5, 10 f.

Repeating them here: Zeller in his Plat. Stud. (Tubingen, 1839) rejects even
the Laws, but in the first edition of his Philos, d. Gr. (1846) he accepts them.

452

THE WRITINGS OF PLATO— NOTES

453

Cf. Raeder, p. io; p. 28, n. 4. Cf. Cousin, Promenade phil. en all.: “On ote a
Platon ses plus certaines, ses plus celebres dialogues, les Lois par exemple. Et
qui done est l’auteur des Lois, je vous prie?”

A later group: Cf. Shorey, Diss.y p. 10, n. 1 and p. 43, n. 4; Campbell,
Theaet.y pp. xxxiii ff.; supra , p. 27.

Method of style statistics: Cf. Shorey in Class. Phil.y VII (1912), 490-92; 59
ibid.y XXIII (1928), 293-97; Gildersleeve, AJPy X (1889), 470-80.

Criticized youth: Cf. Phaedr. 275 B7 with Laws 886 D; Gorg. 461 C 7;
and the inference from Rep. 540 A that Plato must then have been about
fifty years old.

In Platonic literature: Cf. the copious literature in Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 67-68*. 60

Allin e: Op. cit.

Grote surmises: I, 265 flf.; Chaignet, p. 1 13 ; Zeller, pp. 444-45, contra, “Al-
lein diese ganze Deduktion beruht auf einer Reihe unsicherer Voraussetz-
ungen”; Alline, pp. 27-33.

Aristophanes of Byzantiu?n: Cf. Diog. L. III. 61-62; Grote, I, 272 ff.;
Chaignet, pp. 1 12-13 ff.; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 220; Zeller, II, i4, 444, and n. 1;
cf. p. 494, n. 2; Alline, pp. 78-103.

Indicated by Plato himself: Soph. 217 A; Polit. 258 A; Tim. 27 AB, 20 AB;
Crit. 108 AB. Cf. Diog. L. III. 61-62; Alline, pp. 97-98, 114.

Cratylus: We would substitute Theaetelus .

The word employed by Aristotle: eX/cei, Diog. L. Ill, 61; cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 60
9. 10, 1159 b 15; Soph. El. 167 a 35.

Grote' s elaborate argument: I, 266 ff.

Thrasyllusy a contemporary of Augustus and Tiberius: Cf. Diog. L. III. 61
56 ff.; Albinus Isag. 4; Chaignet, p. 115; Grote, I, 289; Zeller, p. 494, n. 2;
Ueberw.-Pr., p. 220; Alline, pp. 112, 120.

The alternative or secondary titles: Alline (p. 125) gives a complete list. But
only the Republic , Symposium , Sophist , and Politicus really designate the sub¬
ject thus. Cf. Chaignet, pp. 115, 117.

Unnamed companion: Cf. on Prot. 309. Cf. the unnamed companion in 63
the spurious dialogues Hipparchus , Minosy and Ilept SiKaiov.

The art of the modern novelist: Cf., e.g., Euthyd. 275 D, 276 B, 283 E, 64
300 D, 302 B, 303 B; Prot. 333 B, 334 C, 335 A, 339 D, 360 D; Charm.

162 CD, 169 CD; Gorg. 458 C, 473 E; Lysis 222 B; Rep. 342 D, 342 E,

350 CD; Phaedo 61 CD, 86 D, 88 C, 89 AB, 103 A, 117B; Theaet. 117B;
Parmen. 130 AB, etc.

On Plato as novelist cf. Pater, Plato and Platonism , pp. 117-18; Hug. on
Symp. 176 A.

Criticism of Socrates: Cf. Horneffer, infra, p. 461. 65

Thesis of Schleiertnacher: Cf. Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 188, 219; O. Immisch, Neue 66
Jahrb.y XXXV (1915), 546-47; Wind.-Goedeck., Gesch. d. abendl. Philos..
p. 120.

I have repeatedly explained: Cf. Unity , p. 4; “Recent Platonism,” p. 309. 67
Cf. my review of Windelband in AJPy X (1889), 354.

Interpretation of Plato's intentions: Cf. Unity , p. 88: The object of this
discussion and the expression “unity of Plato’s thought” may easily be mis-

454

WHAT PLATO SAID

understood. I may therefore be permitted to repeat that I have not meant
to sophisticate away the obvious and inevitable variations in Plato’s moods,
and minor beliefs from youth to old age. Nor in the study of such develop¬
ment would J reject the aid of a sober and critical method of style statistics,
as, e.g., that of Ritter, “Die Sprachstatistik in Anwendung auf Platon und
Goethe,” Neue Jahrb ., 1903. My thesis is simply that Plato on the whole be¬
longs to the type of thinkers whose philosophy is fixed in early maturity
(Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer) rather than to the class of those who re¬
ceive a new revelation every decade (Schelling).

68 Voluntary and involuntary : Rep. 454 A; Phileb. 14 C, eKovoi re Kat anovaiv ;

Theact. 206 B, eKovra 77 clkovtcl Traljfeiv; ibid. 167 E; Soph. 259 D; already in
Lysis 216 B.

Ethical problems: Phaedr. 237 C, 263, and, from a slightly different point
of view, Rep. 538 D; Phaedo 90 C. This is largely due to a false conceit of
knowledge ( Phaedr . 237 C), which the elenchus as described in Soph. 230 B
and practiced in the minor dialogues cures. Cf. Meno 84 AB. So Soph.
232 AB gives the raison d'etre of passages ( Gorg., Prot., Ion) in which a pre¬
tender to universal knowledge is pressed for a specific definition of his func¬
tion which he naturally is unable to give.

68 In the minor dialogues: Polit. 306 ff., esp. 306 A; Cf. Laws 627 D 1-3; Rep.
348 E 8-9 (Loeb), with reference to the arguments of Gorg. 474 C ff. Cf. Laws
837 A with reference to the problem of the Lysis; Laws 661 B, 687, 688,
688 B, where the paradox of Gorg. 467 is reaffirmed, “whether in jest or
earnest”; Rep. 505 B with Charm . 173 E-174 B; Rep. 505 C with Gorg.
499 B, where Callicles is forced to admit that some pleasures are bad. Zeller
(p. 604) thinks that Rep. 505 C refers to the Philebus. Bui: the advocates of a
late date for the Philebus rightly deny any specific parallel.

68 So confused: Even after the Republic and Politicus , Plato, in Laws 963 ff.,
approaches the problem of the “political art” and the unity of virtue precisely
in the manner of the tentative dialogues. There is no reason for taking seri¬
ously Socrates’ dramatic bewilderment as to the “political art” in Euthyd.
292 DE that would not apply equally to the avowal of ignorance in Laws
963 BC, or in the Politicus itself, 292 C. The political art, i.e., ultimate ethi¬
cal and social “good,” was always a problem to Plato, as it must be to any
thoughtful, conscientious man (Rep. 451 A). In the Laws (964 ff.) as in the
Republic , he finally limits himself to indicating the kind of training that will
prepare the mind to apprehend it best. But as against the ideals of Athenian
sophists and politicians, his beliefs were defined “already” in the Euthyph.
2 CD, and the Gorg. 463 D ff., 521 D.

Composing the “Protagoras” : “One of the finest specimens of analysis in
all his writings” (John Stuart Mill, IV, 250).

By habit and belief: Phaedo 82 AB, Rep. 522 A, 619 C; Laws 966 C.

69 Epoch in Plato's thought: Not to dwell on the resemblance of Meno 99 C
and Apol. 22 C (cf. also the Ion), why, if Plato has no dramatic reserves, is
opdrj 86£a ignored in the Euthydemus? Or is the Euthydemus , with its mature
logic and its assumption that virtue can be taught, earlier than the Meno?
Cf. supra , pp. 70 and 155 ff.

THE WRITINGS OF PLATO— NOTES

455

Definitions of the several virtues: Cf. Loeb Rep., Vol. I, Introd., p. xv, and 72
Rep. 428, 429, 431 E, 433, 435 CDE, 441-42.

Formula of a definition: Cf. Loeb, Rep., Vol. I, Introd., pp. xl ff.; my
article, “Summum bonum,” in Hastings, and my “Idea of Good,” pp. 188-
239-

Powt consistently to the same conclusion: Cf. now Friedlander, I, 8; I, 158; 73
II, 47, 71, 98, 190, 292 with Shorey, Class. Phil., XXIII (1928), 295; XXVI
(1931), 107.

EUTHYPHRO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, pp. T4I-54.

Burnet, Euthyphro , Apology, Crito. 1924. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil.,
XXI (1926), 287.

Croiset, M., Bude Platon, I, 177 ff. Paris, 1920.

Friedlander, II, 81-90.

Gomperz, II, 358-67.

Gottlieb, E., Zum Problem des “Euthyphron” “Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos.

und Soziologie,” XXX, Nos. 3 and 4 (1926), 270-79.

Grote, G., I, 437-57.

Heidel, W. A., “On Plato's Euthyphro ” Proc. Amer. Phil. Assoc., XXXI
(1900), 163-81.

- , Platos “ Euthyphro .” New York, 1902.

Hottermann, E., “Platons Polemik im Euthyphron und Kratylos ” Sokrates,
LXIV (1910), 65-89.

Raeder, pp. 127-30.

Ritter, I, 363—68.

Taylor, pp. 146-56.

Wagner, E., Ueber Platos “Euthyphron” zur Frage seiner Echtheit und zu
seiner Erkldrung , “Festschrift f. L. Friedlander,” pp. 438-55. Leipzig,
1895.

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 204-8; II, 76-81.

NOTES

2 A Porch of the King Archon: Frazer, Pausan., II, 55 ff.; Polit. 290 E 6;
Menex. 238 D 2, with Class. Phil., V (1910), 362. Cf. Theaet. 210 D.

2 B One Meletus: Cf. 5 A, 15 E; Apol. 23 E; Theaet. 210 D. Meletus was
an insignificant tragic poet of the deme of Pithos. Some scholars think that
the accuser of Socrates was the son of the tragic poet Meletus (Zeller, p.
192, n. 5). Cf. C. F. Hermann, Disputatio de Socratis accusatoribus, pp. 4 ff.;
Schanz, Apol., pp. 16-19; Burnet on Euthyphro 2 B 9. For a similar short
vivid description cf. Rivals 134 B. Such characterizations are frequent in
Plautus.

2 C D He is the only statesman: Cf. Gorg. 521 D, 527 DE, ethics the end
of statesmanship. But cf. Burnet ad loc.

2 D Like a good gardener: For the figure cf. Theaet. 167 B; Rep. 589 B 2;
Theag. 121 BC; Bacon’s “georgics of the mind”; Aesch. Eumen. 91 1. Cf. Bur¬
net, ad loc. (defends the figure). Cf. Elyot, The Govemour, I, 4. Cf. Boe¬
thius III. i; Cic. Tusc. II. 5; Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, passim, e.g., p. 33.

3 B A divine voice: There is no evidence that this was in fact the ground
of the accusation. Xenophon ( Mem . I. 1.3) perhaps gets the idea from this

456

EUTHYPHRO— NOTES

457

passage. Cf. Burnet on Apol. 31 D. For the Daimonion cf. Euthyd. 272 E;
Phaedr. 242 B; Rep. 496 C; Apol. 27, 31 CD, 40 AB; Theaet. 151 A; Ale. I
103 A; Theag. 128 D ff. Zeller, pp. 74 ff. with lit.; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 59*.

3 C Face them (ofioae lev at): Cf. Euthyd. 294 D; Theaet. 166 A; Rep.
610 C. Cf. II. XIII. 337, II. 24; Aristoph. Eccl. 863, 876; Lysistr. 451; Thu-
cyd. II.62; Xen. Anab. III. iv. 4; Cyn. X. 21; Symp. II. 13; Eurip. Orest.
921; Ar. Met. 1089 a 3.

3 C No great matter to be laughed at: Cf. Rep. 451 A (Loeb), 452 B; Laws
830 B.

3 C Does not teach others : For the expression cf. on Meno 100 A. For
the idea that Socrates is not a teacher but only a seeker cf. Apol. 33 A, “I
was nobody’s teacher”; Xen. Mem. I. 2. 3; cf. also Laches 186 BC; Rep.
338 B; and Cleitophon , passim.

3 D Pours out: Cf. for the idea that Socrates was accessible to every¬
body, Xen. Mem. I. 1. 10.

3 E Pleasant hour in the courtroom: Cf. Cic. De or. I. 57, “Itaque hilari-
tatis plenum iudicium ac laetitiae fuit.” The Laws reprobate such practices
(876 B, 7 66 D).

3 E Only you prophets: Cf. on Laches 195 DE.

4 A The proverbial bird: Cf. Euthyd. 291 B; Aesch. Ag. 394; Ar. Met.
1009 b 37; Horn. II. XVII. 75; Clem. Alex. Strom. 317 B; Pers. Sat. III. 61.
Cf. Leutsch and Schneidewin, II, 677, note on 60 B for synonymous expres¬
sions.

4 BC For the murder of a guilty slave: On the law and history cf. Burnet,
p. 25. The suit, if real, was brought before the loss of Naxos in 404.

4 BC The fact that the man is your father is i?relevant: Plato does not agree
with Shaw and Butler on the family. Cf. on Crito 50 E. But cf. Burnet.

If genuine: Cf. Crito 51 BC, 50 E; Laws 717 D; Ep. VII. 331 D.

5 A Become a disciple of Euthyphro: Cf. Hipp. Maj. 286 D.

5 BC More talk of him than of me: Cf. on 3 E; Dem. IV. 44; Aesch. 77-
marchus 171, 172; Lysias Against Andoc. XLII. 13; Sext. Emp. adv. mathem.
B40.

5 E As Zeus punished his: Cf. Rep. 378 B.

5 E f. Censorship of Homeric theology: Rep. 377-78 ff.

6B Sudden modulations: Cf. infra , 11 BC; Phaedo 115 A 5; Meno 81 A;
Gorg. 507 E-508 A, where the shift is marked by elev, Phaedr. 260 C 7. Cf.
Ivo" Bruns, Das literarische Portrdt der Griechen, p. 216; Karl Vering, Platons
Staat , p. 7.

6B Friendly earnestness: Cf. Charm. 157 C ; Phaedr. 264 A; Gorg. 519 D,
513 C; Symp. 201 C; Gorg. 527 E; Laws 662 B; Hipp. Maj. 284 B; Gorg.
453 B.

Ruskin: Aratra Pent elicit § 107.

6 C Peplus: For the tt€t\os or robe of Athena carried in the Panathenaic
procession cf. also Eurip. Hecuba 465 ff- with scholia ad loc .; Aristoph.
Knights 566 with scholia; Plut. Demetr. 12; Harpocr., s.v. 7re7r\os; Suidas, s.v.
7T€7rXos; Pollux 7, 50.

WHAT PLATO SAID

458

Cf. also A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen, pp. 107-16; Baumeister, Denk-
rndler , II, 1185; Frazer, Pausanias , II, 574.

The scholiast on Rep. 327 A adds that at the lesser Panathenaea the war
of the Athenians with Atlantis was woven in Athene’s robe — a misapprehen¬
sion probably of Proclus on Tim. 19 B, 26 E, 41.

6 C 0 Euthyphron , right-minded friend: Ruskin’s development of the ety¬
mology shows that he feels the modulation to friendly earnestness here.

6 C Socrates replies drily: Cf. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, “We air a
reading people here, sir, said the general. You will meet with much informa¬
tion among us that will surprise you, sir.” “I have not the least doubt of it,
sir,” returned Martin.

6 C To another time: els aides. Cf. on Lysis 205 AB.

6 D Instances of piety: Cf. on Laches 190 E; also Phaedo 78 D.

6 D Ideajorm , or aspect: For the apparent identity, even in the “earlier”
dialogues of the terminology of the definition and the “Platonic idea” cf.
supra , 5D; Laches 197 E fF.; Hipp. Map 287 C, 288 A 9, 289 D 4; Meno
72 C 7-8 fF., 74 B 1; Unity, p. 31; Friedlander, II, 84.

6 DE That makes them piety: Cf. Meno 72 C; Shorey, “Origin of the Syl¬
logism,” Class. Phil., XIX (1924), 8-9.

6 E We can look: airo^XeTroiv and fiXeiruv belong often to the terminology
of the ideas. Cf. Cratyl. 389 A 5 and B 2; Gorg. 474 I) 5; Prot. 354 C 1 ; Gorg.
503 E 1 ; Rep. 472 C 7, 484 C 9, which illustrates the origin of the expression
in the artist looking to his model, Ale. II 145 An; Tim. 28 A. It is im¬
possible, however, to distinguish this technical use from its more general ap¬
plications. Isocrates, e.g., has it, perhaps sometimes in imitation of Plato.
Cf. Isoc. Peace 18 (cf. Phaedr. 237 D); To Nicocles 9; Panath. 217; Antid. 130,
292. Aristotle uses it several times, e.g., Cat. 5 b 1; De an. 404 b 7; Pol.
1296 a 34, and about seven times elsewhere, once with ironical reference to
Plato {Met. 991 a 23).

6 E Pattern: ira pabeiypa. Cf. Parmen. 132 D; Rep . 592 B; Ale. I 132 D;
Tim. 28 B, 29 B, 48 E; Rep. 500 E; Theaet. 176 E; and on Polit. 277 D.

6E-7A Than Hippias: Cf. Hipp. Maj. 287 D ff. Cf. Meno 71 E fF.,
77 AB; Theaet. 146 C-47 D, 151 DE; Laches 191 E. Thrasymachus in Rep.
339 A 3 also shows that he understands the nature of a definition.

7 D If they quarrel: Plato never forgets. Cf. Gorg. 480 E, which Gomperz
(II, 332) misapprehends; Polit. 270 E 9; Phaedo 71 A 10, 103 B; Tim. 49 B 8,
ebs boKovpev , with 54 B 8; Prot. 359 BC with 336 D; Meno 82 A 1-2; Rep . 392
AB; Cratyl. 391 E 2; Symp. in fine. Cf. on Hipp. Min. 376 B and passim.

7 C Measurement: Cf. Platonism and the History of Science , p. 176. The
conception of an art of measuring and of the scientific importance of meas¬
ure pervades all Plato’s writings. Cf. Prot. 356 D; Phileh. 55 L fF.; Rep.
602 DE; Polit. 283-85; Xen. Mem. I. 1.9, apLOprjaavTas 7) per pi] govt as fj

GTT\GGVTGS.

8 D What they dispute is who is the wrongdoer: For the idea that the ques¬
tion of justice is the source of all disputes, cf. Ale. I 112 A fF.; Hipp. Maj.
294 D; cf. also Phaedr. 263 A fF., 250 B; Polit. 285 E-286 A. Cf. Xen. Mem.
IV. 4. 7-8, and perhaps Eryx. 396 CD.

EUTHYPHRO— NOTES

459

gB Take too long: Cf. similar evasions in Lucian, e.g., Hermotim , n.
gB Ti?ne to explain it to a jury : Cf. Apol. 37 A, 19 A; Gorg. 455 A;
Theaet. 172 E 1, 201 B 2, Isoc. Antid. 54. Cf. further Ale . 1 114 B.

g DE As hypothesis: Cf. on Hipp. Maj. 288 A 9; Phaedr. 237 D, dfxoXoyiq.
Oepevoi opov; cf. 263 DE. Cf. infra , n C. Cf. Herbert Spencer, Various Frag¬
ments , p. 1 1, “Every generalization is at first an hypothesis”; Ogden, Meaning ,
p. 209, “Thirdly, all definitions are essentially ad hoc, etc.” Cf. Charm. 163 A.
Wilamowitz (II, 150) does not distinguish this from other uses of “hypothe¬
sis.” But in II, 349 he more nearly follows me on Phaedo 101 D and Rep.
51 1 A. Cf. Class. Phil., IX (1914), 345, and Unity , p. 13.

9 CD At liberty to modify: Socrates always allows that. Cf. Charm. 164 D;
Prot. 354 E 8; Laches 199 D; Gorg. 461 D 3, 489 CD; Rep. 340 C (Loeb).

10 A Holy because they love it: Cf. Apelt, p. 104. Cf. Leslie Stephen,
History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century , I, 124 (Clarke):
“Things are not holy and good because commanded by God, but are com¬
manded by God because good and holy.” Cf. Inge, Christian Ethics , p. 409:
“A thing is not right because it is commanded by God — if we think that, we
shall do many things which are neither right nor commanded by God; a thing
is commanded by God because it is right.” The question was much debated
in the Middle Ages and is still unsettled.

11 A 7 Quality: Cf. Gorg. 448 E 5.

11 C When bound: Cf. Meno 97 DE, 98 A. For Daedalus, cf. Novotny,
Plato s Epistles , pp. 82-83. For Socrates as sculptor cf. Walter Miller,
Daedalus and Thespis , II, 382 flf

11 C The interlocutor who is responsible for the conclusions: Cf. Theaet .
161 AB; Rep. 339 D (Loeb). Cf. Laches 193 D, 199 C, 192 D; Symp. 202 C;
Rep . 389 A.

11 E Something too much: a8rjv. Cf. Rep. 341 C, 541 B; Charm. 153 D.

11 E Take the lead: Cf. Theaet. 197 A 5, 206 C 8; Gorg. 462 D, 489 E;
Hipp. Maj. 293 D f.; Meno 77 D ff., 74 B flf.; Theag. 122 E; Friedlander, II,
563 on Philebus.

12 A Inconvertibility of the universal affirmative: Cf. Prot. 351 A, and the
overelaboration of it in Ale. II 139-40. Aristotle calls this false conversion
the 7r apa to eiropevov eKeyxos (Soph. El. 167 b 1).

12 AB The more comprehensive notion: Cf. Milton, Church Govt., “For
where shame is there is fear; but where fear is there is not presently shame”;
Dante, Convivio IV, Canz. Ill, 11. 101-4. For the special application to ald&s
cf. Laws 671 D and Swinburne:

He is shame’s friend and always as shame saith
Fear answers him again.

For atfobs cf. also Charm. 160 E.

12 D The holy is apart: He means but does not say “species.” Cf. Unity,
p. 52, and on Polit. 263 B. We are more likely to “meet with ideas” if we
bisect the universal (juec Toropeiv) and proceed by successive dichotomies than
if we attempt to separate the ultimate species at once. Cf. the insistence on

460

WHAT PLATO SAID

rd fJLeaa in Phileb. 17 A. Isoc. Antid. 74 seems to have heard of Plato’s dis¬
tinction. Cf. Friedlander, II, 543.

12 D What part: This again “anticipates” the method of definition by
genus and specific difference. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1106 a 13; Topics , 103 b 15.

12 E Service: Cf. Rep. 427 B 7; Laws 930 E 5; Ale. I 122 A 2; Isoc. An¬
tid. 282; To Nic. 20; Areop. 29; Hel. 57. Cf. Mayor on Cic. Nat. deor. I. 41,
“Pietas justitia adversum deos.” Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 4. 13; Def. 412 E 14.

13 E Many and fine works: 7ro\\d nal Ka\a. Cf. Apol. 22 C 3, 22 D 2;
Gorg. 451 D; Hipp. Maj. 286 B. Cf. Mill, Theism , p. 256.

14 B As is pleasing to the gods: Cf. Phaedr. 273 E.

15 A Do ut des: Cf. Polit. 290 CD; Ale. II 148 E; and Horace’s votis pa-
cisci ( Odes III. 29. 59). Cf. Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People ,
p. 202.

15 B More cunning than Daedalus: For the continued figure cf. on Ion

535-36.

15 A Popular religion: Cf. Eurip. Hipp. 7-8; Eurip., passim , e.g., Here.
Fur. 1345, “God, if he be God, hath no need of aught”; Homer’s and Virgil’s
gods. Cf. Milton, “Sonnet on His Blindness”:

God doth not need
Either man’s works or his own gifts.

Gomperz (II, 367) quotes Kant: “In a universal religion there are no special
duties towards God; he can receive nothing from us, etc.” Somewhat differ¬
ently Spinoza, but to the same general effect, says that we cannot expect God
to love us in return. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 4. 10, peyaXoirpeireaTepov rjyovpLcu fj
ojs rrjs eprjs Oepoavelas Tpoadeicrdai; Lucret. V. 105-6.

15 D This elusive Proteus: This now commonplace metaphor is found first
in Plato. Cf. on Ion 541 E.

From a single supposed purpose: Cf. my review of Friedlander, Class. Phil.,
XXVI (1931), 107. Cf. Cratyl ., p. 267; and chap, ii, supra, p. 63.

Eliminates piety: Cf. Thompson on Meno 78 D; Gomperz, II, 363 and

in, 37-

Not limited to these four: E.g., kXevOepioTrjs and peyaXo7rpe7raa {Rep. 402
C), /zeyaXoTrpeTreia again in 536 A.

APOLOGY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, J., Platonis “ Apologia Socratis .” Cambridge, 1910.

Burnet, J., Euthyphro , Apology , Cr/Vo. Oxford, 1924. Cf. Shorey’s review,
C/ajj. P/z/7., XXI (1926), 287.

Croiset, M., Platon: GEuvres completes , ed. Bude, I, 117 fF. Paris, 1920.
Cron-Uhle, Platon: Verteidigungsrede des Sokrates. Kriton. Neubearbeitet
von E. Struck. 12th ed. Leipzig, 1920. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil.y
XXV (1930), 399-401.

Derenne, Eud., op. cit., pp. 71-175.

Friedlander, II, 156-71.

Grote, I, 410-24.

Horneffer, E., Der j tinge Platon. I: Sokrates und die “ Apologie." Giessen,
1922. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil., XVII (1922), 173-75.

Laguna, Th. de, “The Interpretation of the Apology ,” Phil. Rev., XVIII

(I9°9)> 23~37-

Natorp, pp. 4-10; Ueber Sokrates , “Philos. Monatshefte,’’ XXX (1894), 337“

70.

Pohlenz, pp. 18-23.

Riddell, J., The “ Apology ” of Plato. Oxford, 1877.

Ritter, I, 363-90.

Schanz, M., Apologia (Vol. Ill of the “Sammlung ausgewahlter Dialoge Pla-
tos”). Leipzig, 1893.

Shorey, P., “Note on Apol. 27 E,” Class. Phil., XXIII (1928), 68-70.
Stallbaum-Wohlrab, “ Apologia ” et “Crito.” Lipsiae, 1 877.

Taylor, pp. 156-67.

Wilamowitz, I, 165-69; II, 50-55.

Zeller, pp. 191-232.

NOTES

The “ historicity ” of Socrates' speech is still under debate: The majority of
modern scholars consider the Apology as a more or less faithful reproduction of
Socrates’ words (cf. Zeller, pp. 195-97, n. 1 on p. 196). Grote {Plato [ed. 1888],
I, 410) agrees with both Schleiermacher and Zeller that the Apology is “in
substance the real defense pronounced by Socrates.” Others are more re¬
served in their opinions. Cf. J. Adams, Plat. “Apol. Socratis ” (Cambridge,
1910), p. xxxi, and Riddell, p. xxviii. Similarly, M. Croiset, Bude Plato, I,
138. Cf. Taylor, Plato, p. 156; Wilamowitz, II, 50; Friedlander, II, 156-57,
who more skeptically considers it Socratic in spirit rather than in word. Cf.
further Schanz, Apology, p. 70; Burnet, Plato: “Euthyphro ,” “ Apology ” and
“Crito," pp. 63 ff. Cf. Shorey, review of Derenne, Class. Phil., XXVI (1931),
228: “The exhaustive review of the case of Socrates in 1 14 pages seems to go

461

462

WHAT PLATO SAID

over the whole ground again, citing the immense mass of the modern litera¬
ture and even restating the plot of Aristophanes’ Clouds for readers who may
not have read it and yet are prepared to read this book.”

On the genuineness of the Xenophontic Apology cf. Burnet, Apology , p. 66;
cf. H. von Arnim in Mitt, der dan. Akad. d. IViss. (Kopenhagen, 1923), VIII,
1. He defends the authenticity of Xenophon’s Apology (according to Frese,
Philologus, LXXXI [1926], 378, n. 1). A. Hug, Die Unachtheit der dem Xeno¬
phon zugeschriebenen “ Apologie des Sokrates ,” in Kochly’s Akad. Vortrage (Zu¬
rich, 1859), pp. 430-39; R. Lange, De Xenophontis quae dicitur “ Apologia ” et
extremo commentariorum capite (diss.; Halle a. S., 1873); A. Croiset, Hist. d. L
L. Gr., IV, 362 ff., who defends its authenticity. Cf. Otto Frick, Xenophontis
quaefertur il Apologia Socratis ” num genuina putanda sit (diss., Philol. Hal.,
XIX, 1— 1 66). This is the best discussion of the problem. On pp. 83 ff. the
author discusses the opinions of scholars from Hermann to Joel. M. Schanz
(ed. of the Apology [1893], pp. 83-84) accepts it. Cf. K. von Fritz, “Zur Frage
der Echtheit der Xenoph. “Apologie,” Rhein. Mus., LXXX (1931), 36 ff.

Modem historian: The speeches of Pericles in Thucydides have been com¬
pared.

Athenian courtroom oratory: “The exordium may be completely paralleled
piece by piece from the orators” (Riddell apud Burnet, p. 66, who argues that
it is parody). Cf. R. J. Bonner, “The Legal Setting of Plato’s Apology ,”
Class. Phil., Ill (1908), 169-77. Cf. also Menzel, “Zum Sokrates-Prozesse,”
Wien. Sitz.-Ber., Vol. CXLV (1903).

Lost literature: Cf. Ueberw.-Pr., p. 13 1.

Apologies of Socrates were written by: Lysias (F. Blass, Attisclie Beredsam-
keit, I2, 351; Diog. L. II. 40), Theodectes of Phaselis (Blass, II2, 447), Deme¬
trius of Phalerum (Diog. L. IX. 15, 37, 57), Theon of Antiocheia (Suidas,
s. v. Qewv), Plutarch (catalogue of Lamprias i89),Libanius (ed. Foerster, De¬
clam. I, Vol. V, 1 ff.). Cf. Polycrates’ speech against Socrates (Diog. L. II. 38);
Aelian Var. hist. XI. 10.

17 A-C Calculated simplicity: Cf. 17 C 2.

19 B 2 Distinction: The charges of the comedians are thrown into legal
form, 19 B 2, to the confusion of some commentators. For the actual indict¬
ment cf. 24 B 8 with Diog. L. II. 40 and Xen. Mem. I. 1. 1.

19 BC The comedians: Cf. Aristophanes, Cratinus, Eupolis, Diphilus,
Ameipsias. Aristoph. Clouds 143 ff., 218, 225, etc.; Frogs 1491 f.; Birds 1282,
1 554 L Eupolis, Meineke, II, 553, frag. 10; ibid., p. 552, frag. 9; Ameipsias,
Meineke, II, 703, frag. 1, I; Callias, Meineke, II, 739, frag. 2; Teleclides,
Meineke, II, 371, frags. 2 and 3 and literature on Aristoph. Clouds and Soc¬
rates. For allusions to Socrates in comedy cf. PI. Gomperz, Historische Zeit-
schrijt, CXXIX (3. Folge 33), 395. Also Meineke, s.v. Scoxpar^s.

18 B 7-8 Star-gazing babbler: Cf. on Phaedo 70 C, for a5oXecrxco. For ra
perewpa cf. 23 D; Prot. 315 C; Phaedr. 270 A; Cratyl. 401 B; Xen. Symp.
VI. 6; Aristoph. Clouds 228; Erast. 132 B 9. Burnet argues that since Taylor
has “proved” that the banishment of Anaxagoras dates from 450 or earlier,
this impression about Socrates must long antedate the Clouds.

APOLOGY— NOTES

463

18 B 8, 19 B 5 Makes the worse appear the better reason: I.e., weaker argu¬
ment the stronger. Cf. Nestle, Prot., p. 8; Apelt, p. 64. Cf. 23 D 6. Cf. Mil-
ton, Par. Lost, II, 1 13 ; Aristoph. Clouds 112, 889 ff. Cf. Isoc. Antid. 15.

19 D and E Educate men: Cf. Euthyd. 306 E; Laches 186 CD; Gorg.
519 E; Rep. 600 C; Pro/. 317 B \Hipparch. 229 C. Cf. aWovs iroielv, Euthyph.
3 C, and on Mcno 100 A. Cf. infra, 29 DE, 30 E 5, 31 B. Cf. Shorey on Gom-
perz’ Greek Thinkers in Class . Phil., I (1906)., 295-99; “Philologists seek a
knot in a bulrush when they raise difficulties about the role of a preacher of
virtue attributed to Socrates in the Apology ,” etc., with references to Laches
188 A; Euthyd. 278 D; Phaedo 1 1 5 B. Cf. Epict. III. 1. 19 and infra, 29 DE.

20 B The Sophist Evenus: Cf. Phaedo 60 D; Phaedr. 267 A. Euenos of
Paros, a contemporary of Socrates (he died shortly after 399), was a writer
of epigrams (Suidas, s.v. ^tXtoros) and of epooTucai ewidei^eis (Artemid. Oneir.
I. 4.). Cf. Reitzenstein, art. “Euenos” in Pauly-Wiss. and literature in Ue-
berw.-Pr., p. 55*.

20 B Teach virtue expeditiously for five minae: Cf. Euthyd. 273 DE; Prot.
349 A; Mcno 91 B. For the Sophists’ taking pay cf. on Hipp. Maj. 282 CD.
Cf. also Isoc. Against the Sophists 3: promise to make a man happy for three
or four minae.

20 E Verification of the oracle: Xenophon (Apol. 14) says that it was given
in the presence of many. Cf. Zeller (p. 52, n. 4) who thinks that Socrates’
philosophical activity begins long before the oracle, and what he says in the
Apology is just “eine rednerische Wendung.” He is also of the opinion that
no special importance must be attributed to the oracle. Riddell (Introd., pp.
xxiii-xxiv) argues in the same vein. Cf. J. Stenzel in Pauly-Wiss., s.v. “Soc¬
rates,” Sp. 813, who refers to R. Herzog, Das delph. Orakel als ethischer Preis-
richter (in the Anhang of E. Horneffer’s Der j unge Platon ), and to W. Nestle,
Sokr. und Delphi, “Korr. f. d. hoher. Schulen Wurttemb.,” XVII, 81-91.

21 CD The absence of the false conceit of knowledge: Cf. 23 C 7. Cf. also
on Lysis 218 AB; Symp. 203-4. Cf. Xen. Mem. III. 9. 6; IV. 2. 26.

22 A The poets: No dialogue of Plato treats especially of this point.

23 C I?nitations of them by his youthful followers: Cf. Rep. 538-39; Phileb.
15 E 16; Gorg. 499 B 6; Xen. Mem. I. 2. 40 ff.; Grote, II, 22. For the charge
of his corrupting youth cf. Euthyph. 2 CD; Rep. 494 DE, 517; Isoc. Antid. 30.

24 C ff. Right of questioning the opponent: Cf. Lysias XII. 24. 25; Dem.
XLVI § 10 where the law is given. Cf. Burnet on 24 C 9 and R. J. Bonner,
Evidence in Athenian Courts, pp. 56-57.

25 CD Ironically fallacious argument: This and similar “fallacies” in the
interrogation of Meletus dramatically exhibit Socrates’ superiority in dialectic
and the thoughtlessness of his opponent.

26 D Confounds: Cf. 23 D 4, ra Kara tt6.vtwv tosv (friXoaoifrovvTcoi' tt poxetpa,
and Xen. Mem. I. 2. 31. Cf. Isoc. Busiris 9, to irpoxeipoTdTov.

26 DE With Anaxagoras: Sometimes quoted as an illustration of Plato’s
antiscientific “fanaticism.” Cf. on Phaedo 98 BC; Laws 887 E.

27 Admonition of a divine voice: Cf. on Euthyph. 3 B.

464

WHAT PLATO SAID

27 Must believe in things divine: Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., XXIII (1928),
68. Cf. Xen. Apol. 1 1 ; Mem. I. 1. 2. Xenophon, as J. B. Bury observes (“The
Trial of Socrates/’ Selected Essays, pp. 75-90), flatly denies that Socrates did
not worship the gods vojjlco TroXecos, which Plato does not deign to do. Cf., how¬
ever, on Phaedo 1 18 A 7.

28E-29 A Abandon the post assigned to him by God: Cf. Crito 51 B 8;
Isoc. Archidamus 93. Cf. Tennyson, Lucretius:

That men like soldiers may not quit the post
Allotted by the gods.

Cf. also Phaedo 62 B on suicide.

28 E Amphipolis, Potidaea, and Delium: Stenzel, Pauly-Wiss., s.v. “Soc
rates,” Sp. 812. Socrates fought at Potidaea (432-429 b.c.). Cf. Symp
219 E; Charm. 153 A; Diog. L. II. 23; At Delium (424 b.c.); cf. Symp. 220 E;
Laches 181 B; saved Xenophon, who fell from his horse (Diog. L. II. 22); at
Amphipolis (422 b.c.) (Diog. L. II. 22).

29 DE Take thought for their souls' welfare: For eTTipeXeia used with a
similar moral significance cf. infra , 31 B, 36 C; Crito 51 A; Euthyph. 2D;
Laches 179 A, 187 A; Prot. 325 C, 326 E, 327 D, 328 E; Gorg. 515 BC;
Phaedo 107 C, 115 B; Rep. 556 C; Tim. 18 B; Laws 807 CD, 847 A. Cf. Xen.
Mem. I. 2. 4, I. 2. 8, IV. 8. 11; Isoc. II. 1 2; Demon. 52; Sophists 8; Antid.
210-11, 214, 250, 290, 304; Epict. III. 1. 19.

30 E Gadfly: Apelt (p. 69) says is spur, not “Bremse.” Burnet holds the
other view, and so Adam, Stock, Croiset, and almost all other commentators.
Cf. Friedlander, II, 165, n. 1.

31 C ff. Perhaps Plato's own apology: Cf. on Rep. 496 D (Loeb.). Cf.
Xen. Mem. I. 6. 15; Theaet. 173 C ff.

32 A 8 (j>opTLKCL plv Kai biKCLViKOL'. Cf. Gorg. 482 E. Jowett mistranslates.
32 D 2 Apologies for the boast: ay pocKorepov. Cf. on Gorg. 509 A. Cf. also

Charm. 158 D, eav .... epavrov eTraLvCi, I'crws eir agOes (fravelTai; Phaedo 87 A;
Laws 688 D; Isoc. To Philip 82; Norlin on Isoc. Antid. 177 (Loeb). Cf. also
on Gorg. 486 C.

32 B The generals of Arginusae: Cf. Gorg. 474 A; Axiochus 368 D; Xen.
Mem . I. 1. 18 and IV. 4. 2; Hell. I. 7. 9 ff. for references to this event. Cf.
Burnet ad loc.; Paul Cloche, “L’afFaire des Arginuses,” Rev. hist., CXXX
(1919), 5-68; Grote, History of Greece (1869), VII, 421 fF.; M. Frankel, Die
attischen Geschworenengerichte (1877), PP* 7 9-85; Riddell’s note on Apol. 32
B; Apelt, p. 69; Isoc. Antid. 19.

32 C Leon of Salami s: Cf. Ep. VII. 324 E 2-3; Xen. Hell. II. 3. 39; Mem.
IV. 4. 3; Kirchner, Prosop. Attica, II, No. 9100; Swoboda, in Pauly-Wiss.,
s.v. “Leon,” No. 13 (end); Burnet on 32 C 6; Horace, “vultus instantis ty-
ranni” ( Odes III. 3. 3).

34 C Appeals to the pity of the jurors: Cf. Laws 949 B; Xen. Mem.
IV. 4. 4; Aristoph. Wasps 975 ff.; Isoc. Antid. 321. Cf. Burnet ad loc.

34 D 5 Born of an oak or a rock: Cf. Homer Od. XIX. 163. Cf. II. XXII.
126 aliter; Rep. 544 D 7; Phaedr . 275 B 8.

APOLOGY— NOTES

465

36 D In the Prytaneum: Cf. Isoc. Antid. 95; Aristoph. Knights 574 (with
schol. ad loc.), Frogs 764, Peace 1084; Dem. 414, 9; Cic. De or. I. 54; Suidas,
s.v. On the origin of the Prytaneum cf. J. G. Frazer, Jour. Phi/., XIV (1885),
145 ff. Cf. Liddell and Scott, s.v., and Burnet’s note ad loc. Cf. R. Scholl,
“Die Speisung im Prytaneion zu Athen,’’ Hermes , VI (1872), 14-54.

38 A Like Aristotle's great-souled man: Ar. Eth. 1 1 23 b 2 ff.

39 CD Silence the voices of criticism by putting men to death: It has been
argued that this forbids dialogues before Socrates’ death. Some say the proph¬
ecy was never fulfilled, but Plato may have thought the Gorgias fulfilled it.
Cf. perhaps Phaedo 7 8 A. Cf. Lowell, Biglow Papers:

It’s the las’ time that I shall e’er address ye
But ye’ll soon find some new tormentor, bless ye.

40 CD If it is an eternal sleep: No inconsistency with the Phaedo, as
some think. Cf. Friedlander, I, 209; Fru tiger, Mythes de Platon, p. 139.

40 C Departure to a better world: airob^pi^aaL (40 E). Cf. Phaedo 117 C,
fjLeTOLK7](ns. Cf. Cic. Tusc. I. 12, “Sed quandam quasi migrationem commuta-
tionemque vitae.”

40 E There: kel. Cf. 41 C; Phaedo 67 B, 01 e/ceT; Crito 54 B; Rep.
330 D 8, 498 C, 614 D.

41 A-C The great spirits who have gone before: Cf. Francis Ledwidge,
“Shall I meet Keats?” Cf. T. S. Eliot:

I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And others of that kidney.

42 God: Cf. Xen. Mem. IV. 8. 6. Saintsbury {English Prose Rhythm , p.
456) pronounces this the most beautiful prose sentence ever written. Cf. the
disastrous flippancy of Jowett’s “God only knows.”

Gospel of all rebellious souls: Cf. Giovanitti to the jury (reported): “It
may be that we are fanatics, Mr. District Attorney. But so was a fanatic
Socrates, who, instead of acknowledging the philosophy of the aristocrats of
Athens, preferred to drink the poison.” Similarly Count Keyserling and many
others.

The dictum of an eminent scholar that there is no philosophic content in
the Apology is refuted by the footnotes to this abbreviated resume and the
Unity of Plato's Thought. Friedlander (II, 161 and 164) finds the unity of
the virtues in this dialogue. Cf. in further illustration of this fact: 19 A 2
and 24 A 3, ev ovtoos 6X170? xpo^o?, with Euthyp . 9 B.

20 A 2 Cf. Rep. I. 338 B, money and thanks. Cf. on Cratyl. 391 B.

20 B 4 aperrjs tt}s avOpwTrivr)s re kcll ttoXitiktis: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1094 bn.

20 E ov yap epov epw tov \byov: Cf. on Symp. 177 A 4. Eurip., frag. 484
(Nauck). Cf. P. Decharme, Euripide et V esprit de son theatre, p. 32.

21 A Character of Chaerephon: Cf. (of Alcibiades) Prot. 336 E.

22 C (frvaei Tivi Kal evdovaia^oPTes: Cf. Meno 99; Phaedr. 245 A 5.

23 C Prot. 326 C: Sons of rich men most leisure for education.

466

WHAT PLATO SAID

23 C 8 Blame me, not themselves: Cf. on Phaedo 90 D.

23 D piapwraros : Cf. Rep. 562 D.

24 E Everybody teaches virtue: Meno 92 E; Prot. 3 27 E.

25 B f. Analogy of the special arts: Cf. Rep. 341 D (Loeb), 349-50; Hipp.
Min. 373-74; Laws 639 B, 709 B; 332 CD (Loeb); Gorg. 451 A; Prot.
31 1 B, 318 B; Thompson on Meno, p. 74

28 B Cf. Go?g. 509 B.

29 B The special Platonic sense of apaOia: Cf. on Lysis 218 AB.

29 D Obey God rather than you: Cf. Carlyle, History of Mediaeval Political
Theory in the West, V, 7-8: “The words attributed to the Apostles, ‘whether
it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than unto God,
judge ye/ represented an immense change in the relation of the individual
personality to society.”

29 E The exaltation of (bpoprjaecos and a\r]deLas above 56% 77s and riprjs : Cf.
Phaedo 68 A, 69 A ff .

30 B With Menex. 240 E.

30 A 6 t<3 deco virripealav: Cf. Euthyph. 13 D.

30 CD Nothing can harm a good man: Cf. Gorg. 527 D.

31 D Cf. Rep. 496 D.

33 A Disclaims teaching: Cf. Meno 71 B. Cf. on Euthyph. 3 C; Xen. Mem.
L2.3.

33 A rd epavrov ttpclttovtos : Cf. on Charm. 161 B.

33 C OeLa poipa-. Cf. on Meno 99 E.

33 E 81 arpLpfj: Cf. on Laches 180 BC; Lysis 204 A.

35 A 5-7 Fear of death: Cf. 29 AB. Cf. also on Laws 727 D.

36 C Self and things of self : Cf. Ale. 1 128 CD, 131 A, 133 D; Isoc. Antid .
290.

37 A okiyov xpovov: Cf. supra , 19 A; on Euthyph. 9B. Cf. Gorg. 455 A.
37 D Cannot endure my pursuits and my ways (diarpqSas) : Cf. Meno

80 B 5-6.

37 D Td look fine (kclXos . ... pot 6 jStos): Cf. Crito 53 E-54 A for the
thought. For the colloquialism cf. Eurip. Orestes 1602.

38 A Socratic irony: Cf. Symp. 216 E 4, which Wilamowitz (. Platon , I,
572) mistakenly says is intended as a reproach.

38 A 5 Untested life: Cf. Laches 187 E ff.; Symp. 215 E ff.; Gorg. 458 A;
and perhaps Theaet. 169 D.

38 D 6 curopia: Gorg. 522 D.

39 A Safety not first: Cf. Gorg. 512 D; Isoc. Archidamus 91.

39 E 5 dLapvOoXoyijaai: Cf. Phaedo 70 B 6.

40 E 6 7ras xpbvos: Cf. Rep. 486 A; Pindar Pyth. I. 46.

40 E a pa: Cf. on Laws 865 D.

CRITO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, J., Platonis “ Crito .” Cambridge, 1896.

Burnet, Euthyphro , Apology , Cr/Vo. 1924.

Croiset, M., Platon: CEuvres completes , ed. Bud6 (Paris, 1920), I, 209 ff.
Friedlander, II, 172-77.

Gomperz, H., “Ueber die Abfassungszeit des Platon. Kriton ” Zeitsch.f.

Philos CIX (1896), 176-79.

Grote, I, 425-36.

Mewes, K., 1st Platons “ Kriton ” auch in philo sophischer Hinsicht ein wich-
tiger Dialog? Magdeburg, 1890.

Raeder, Entw., pp. 99-101.

Ritter, I, 384-90.

Shorey P., “Note on Plato, Crito 49 E-50 A,” Class . Jour., II (1906), 80.
Stallbaum-Wohlrab, “Apologia” et “Crito.” Lipsiae, 1877.

Taylor, pp. 167-73.

Wilamowitz, I, 170-72.

NOTES

44 AB White-robed woman: Symbolic dreams often take that form. Cf.
Aeschyl. Persae 181 ff.; Boethius I. 1 of philosophy. It is quite fantastic to
say that the beautiful woman is the ship.

44 AB In his dream: Cf. the dream in Phaedo 60 E; Apol. 33 C; Diog.
L. II. 35; Cic. De div. I. 25.

44 B Words of Achilles in Homer: II. IX. 363. Perhaps led up to by the
phrase els avpiov. Cf. ibid. VIII. 538. Cf. Rabelais, III, 10. So “on the third
day I shall be perfected” (Luke 13:32) is said to be a reminiscence of the
prophet Hosea (Hos. 6:2).

44 B Go home: Cf. Pease on Cic. De div. I. 25. 52. Cf. Phaedo 63 C, 84 B,
1 15 A, 61 E, 67 E; Emped., frag. 115, 13 (Diels).

Modern and Christian parallels are endless. Cf Ficino’s Introduction to
the Crito.

44 B Plato's superstition: There is no superstition in Plato. Cf. Charm.
156 D, 157 A, 158 B; Euthyph. 3 E; Crito 54 D; Laches 195 E; Meno 81;
Ion 534 AB; Ale. 1 122 A; Gorg. 513 A; Phaedo 61 AB, 81 D; Symp. 175 D;
Phaedr. 250 C, 244 B, 276 E; Theaet. 150 D; Rep. 427 B, 499 BC, 613 A;
Tim. 40 D, 71 A-E; Phileb. 16 C; Laws 642 D, 649 A, 738 B, 747 E, 865 D,
898 E, 899 B, 909 B, 913 C, 927 A, 933 A; Friedlander, I, 58 n.

44 B Sotncwhat breathless protest: His style is confused. Cf. the more dras¬
tic case of Polus in the Gorgias (461 BC).

44 E These sycophants: In the Greek sense. Burnet ( ad loc.) explains that
there is no equivalent English word.

467

468

WHAT PLATO SAID

45 A Are cheap : For the gibe at Socrates’ accusers cf. Gorg. 486 B, 521 C;
Merio 100 BC.

45 E Rescue their master: It can be plausibly argued that Athens didn’t
expect that Socrates would he executed. Cf. supra , p. 24.

46 B Else than the rule of reason: Cf. Gorg. 527 E. Justin Martyr (I. 46)
counts Socrates as a Christian because he lived with the logos. Burnet {ad
loc.) is overinsistent that X070S never means “reason” in Plato.

46 B Conclusions of former discussions: Cf. 53 E, 53 C. Cf. Unity , p. 35,
n. 236, on the Phaedo. The simple truth is that Plato may at any time refer
to any part of his permanent beliefs as familiar doctrine. Cf. also Laches
194 D; Rep. 505 A. Cf. Friedlrinder, II, 378, n. 1.

46 B Hobgoblins: Cf. Phaedo 77 E; Gorg. 473 D 3.

46 C The power of the mob: Cf. 44 C 6, 48 A 9, on the opinion of the
many, in apparent contradiction with Laws 950 BC. But cf. ibid. 646 E-
647 A.

46 C Idle talk: Cf. Laches 196 C; Euthyd. 286 D 11; Tim. 51 C.

46 E Human probability: Ep. VII. 350 E 2; Laws 836 A 6, 959 A 3.

47 DE That part of us , whatever it is: The phrase is merely a literary eva¬
sion of pedantic dogmatic, scientific explicitness. It is uncritical to press it
as many, e.g., Burnet ad loc., have done. Cf. Theaet. 184 D 3, 187 A; Symp.
218 A; cf. Epict. III. 22. 31, eneivo 6 tl 7 rore; James, Psychology, I, 180:
“Why on earth doesn’t the poor man say the soul and have done with it?”
Cf. in a modern novel: “But I am not quick enough in the cerebellum or
whatever it is.”

48 B But to live well: Cf. on Rep. 369 D (Loeb). Cf. on Laws 829 A. For
a similar idea cf. Gorg. 512 D.

49 A Never requite wrong with wrong: Cf. Rep. I. 335 B, E. For the con¬
ventional Greek morality which was to benefit friends and harm enemies cf.
Xen. Mem. II. 6. 35, II. 3. 14, II. 2. 2; Soph. Antig. 643-44; and on Rep.
332 D (Loeb).

49 D Common ground of debate: apxy- Cf. Cratyl. 436 D; Phaedr. 237 D;
Rep. 527 E, the idea without the word apxv- Cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Autocrat: “As a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so
a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two
persons”; Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics , p. 191. Cf.
the mediaeval “contra principia negantem disputari nequit” (Ar. Soph. El.
183 B 22).

49 D Despise one another's counsels: Cf. Lincoln: “These principles can¬
not stand together, .... whoever holds to the one must despise the other.”

50 E f. Wrong his father: Cf. Laws 717 D; Prot. 346 A. Cf. on Euthyph.
4 BC. Cf. Xen. Mem. II. 2. 3 fF. on debt to parents; Eurip. Hec. 403.

51 AB His fatherland: Cf. Sallust Jugurtha 3: “nam vi quidem regere
patriam aut parentes quamquam et possis et delicta corrigas tamen impor-
tunum est.” Cf. Ep. VII. 331 CD; Novotny, Plato's Epistles , p. 178; Cic.
Fam. I. 9. 18; Montaigne, III, 12; Emil Wolff, Francis Bacon's Verhaltnis zu
Platon, pp. 128 ff. There is no real contradiction here with Apol. 29 D.

CRITO— NOTES

469

51 C ff. If they could find a voice: Cf. Edith M. Thomas, The V oice of the
Laws . For the prosopopoeia cf. Menex. 246 C ff.; Dio in Ep. VII. 32^ D ff.;
Lucret. III. 931, Natura; Boethius II. 1, Fortuna.

52 E 1 Lifelong acquiescence: His acceptance of the contract was not ob¬
tained by force, deceit, or surprise. Cf. Laws 920 D. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic.
1135 a 24.

51-52 Virtual social contract: Plato suggests all forms of the social con¬
tract: that between the individual and society here, that in which society
originated (Rousseau; Rep. II. 358 E [Loeb]), that between the monarch and
the people {Laws 683 DE). Cf. Lucret. V. 1145 ff. with sources and com¬
mentators. Cf. Xen. Ages. I. 4. Cf. Shorey on Cron-Uhle13, Class. Phil., XXV
(1930), 400.

52 E Even to Sparta which he praises: Cf. Norlin on Isoc. Nicocles 24
(Loeb). . .

52 D Will he now run away: The invidious word is artfully repeated. Cf.
50 A 7, 53 D 7; Phaedo 99 A 3.

53 B Whether in the well-governed states of Thebes and Megara: It is press¬

ing these words too hard to argue that Plato could not have used them after
395. Cf. Apol. 37 D. # ... ,

54 BC In the world to come: Cf. Soph. Antig. 898. It is uncritical to make
no allowance for the situation and say that immortality is treated differently
here and in the Apology and Phaedo.

54 D Corybants: Cf. Edith M. Thomas, op. cit.: “Dost remember the
wild Corybantes, etc.?” Cf. Euthyd. 277 D; Ion 533 E; Laws 790 D; Aris-
toph. Wasps 1 19.

54 E By God: Burnet’s remark that the words are definitely monotheistic
is an exaggeration. Cf. Shorey in AJP , IX, 417-18. Cf. Karl Mewes, p. 29.

The references to other dialogues in these notes illustrate the unity of
Plato’s thought and sufficiently refute the affirmation of an eminent scholar
that there is no philosophy in the Crito. Cf. Friedlander, II, 1 73> parallels of
Crito with other dialogues.

HIPPIAS MINOR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O. Plat. Aufsdtze , pp. 203-37 ( Hippias I and II).

Croiset, M., Platon: GEuvres completes, I, 21 ff. Paris, 1920.

Friedlander, II, 137-46.

Grote, II, 55-70.

Kraus, O., Platons “Hippias Minor.” Versuch einer Erklarung. Prag,

19 J3-

Ovink, B. J. H., Philo sophische Erklarungen der Platonischen Dialoge “Meno”
und “ Hippias Minor.” Amsterdam, 1931. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class.
Phil , XXVI (1931), 444-45-

POHLENZ, pp. 57-72.

Raeder, pp. 94-95.

Ritter, I, 297-308.

Taylor, pp. 35-38.

WlLAMOWITZ, I, I35-39.

NOTES

Hippias of Elis: Cf. Nestle, Prot ., pp. 33 ff.

Modern rehabilitators: Especially Dupreel, reviewed by Shorey in Class.
Phil. , XVII (1922), 268-71.

Self-sufficiency: For avrapKeia cf. Phileb. 67 A and passim; Rep. 369 B,
387 D; Polit. 271 D; Theaet. 169 D; Tim. 68 E, 33 D. Cf. Lysis 215 A ff.;
Menex. 247 E-248 A for the idea without the word. Cf. Ep. I. 310 A; Plat.
Def. 412 B and DE. Cf. Isoc. Panegyr. 42; Ar. Eth. 1169 b 2.

Provide for all his own wants: Cf. 368 B ff. For the division of labor cf. on
Charm. 161 E.

A jack-of -all-trades: Cf. Erast. 137 B, 133 C, 135 CD; Ale. II 147 B. Cf.
Laws 819 A, 811 A. Cf. Gomperz, II, 291 ff. Raeder (pp. 101-2) says that
Plato does not attack Sophists in his earlier writings. The Hippias Minor is
the only exception and there Hippias does not appear as Sophist but as inter¬
preter of Homer!

His modern admirers: As, e.g., Stanley Hall and Havelock Ellis, Dupreel,
Dewey. Cf. Benn, Greek Philosophers, pp. viii-ix; Mill, IV, 252.

Except what Plato tells us: Cf. Diels, II, 282-88 (c. 79) and lit.; Zeller,
pp. 1316-21; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 53* (lit.); E. Wellmann, in Pauly-Wiss., VIII
(1913), 1706 ff.; and Bjornbo, ibid., pp. 1707 ff., for Hippias as mathematician.

367-68 Induction: Cf. 373-74; Lysis 209; Charm. 159 CD, 167 D; Gorg.
467 BC, 496 D; Rep. 333 A, 381 E ff.; Phaedo 71 A; Phileb. 53 B; Shorey on
Gomperz, Class. Phil., I (1906), 295; Ross, Aristotle, pp. 38-41.

363 AB Just one little difficulty: Cf. Euthyph. 13 A; Prot. 329 B, 328 E;
Charm. 173 D; Hipp. Major 2 86 C 4, E 5; Ion 530 D; Theaet. 145 D 6.

470

HIPPIAS MINOR— NOTES

471

365 CD The -poet is not present: Cf. Prot. 347 E. Cf. Meno 71 D; and on
Rep. 331 E (Loeb) Cf. Friedlander, II, 137.

365 B Homer then .... meant: Cf. Rep. 332 C on Simonides.

365 D In behalf of Homer and himself: For a similar transference of the
argument cf. Phileb. 12 A, 19 A; Charm. 1 62 E; Rep. 331 D; cf. Ar. Topics
i2c a 6(?).

373 A Brief question: For the opposition of long and short speeches
cf. Prot 329 A, 334 E. Cf. Gorg. 465 E, 517-19; Ale. I 106 B; Soph. 217 C;
Parmen. 137; and on Rep. 348 AB (Loeb). Cf. Thucyd. V. 85, Platonic re¬
quest for dialogue and not speech. Cf. Friedlander, II, 254 and I, 18 1 ; Grote,
II, 70 and 78; Pavlu, Ale. I ( Diss ., Philol. Vindob.,\\l\ , No. 1, 19), on Soc¬
rates’ long speeches.

373 B He musty after his prof essions: Cf. Prot. 329 B; Gorg. 462 A, 449 BC.
They all profess to be able to use short speeches.

375 D The monstrosity: Cf. Theaet. 163 D 6, 164 B 5, 188 C 4; Parmen.
129 B; Meno 91 D; Hipp. Maj. 283 C, 300 E; Phileb. 14 E; Phaedo 101 B;
Euthyd. 296 C. Cf. Friedlander, II, 463.

376 B If there is anyone: Plato never forgets himself. Cf. on Euthyph.
7 D, “if the gods quarrel”; Gorg-. 480 E, “if one ought to harm anyone.” Many
modern interpreters miss this point. Cf. Apelt, III, 45; Gomperz, II, 296 and
332; Friedlander, II, 85 (on Euthyph.). Cf. Unity, p. 9.

A e£is, or habit, is not: Cf. also supra , p. 209.

The fallacy: Cf. Unity, p. 10, n. 38, “The obvious irony (372 DE, 376 C)
shows that Plato ‘already’ in the Socratic period does not take it seriously,
but merely uses it for dramatic or propaedeutic purposes. Zeller, p. 597, takes
this as Plato’s real opinion, citing Rep. 535 D and 382, which merely use the
paradoxical terminology to emphasize the thought, acceptable to Mill or
Huxley, that the mere intellectual love of truth (knowledge) ought to be
counted a virtue as well as the ordinary virtue of truthfulness.”

HIPPIAS MAJOR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ammendola, Giuseppe, Platone: “ Ippia maggiore .” Napoli, 1930.

Apelt, Platon. Aujsdtze , pp. 203-37 ( Hippias I and II).

Croiset, A., Platon: CEuvres completes , ed. Bude (Paris, 1922), Vol. II.
Friedlander, II, 105-16.

Grote, G., II, 33-55.

Horneffer, E., De“ Hippias maiore” qui fertur Platonis. Diss., Gottingen,
1895.

POHLENZ, pp. H3-28.

Raeder, pp. 102-6.

Ritter, I, 359-61.

Tarrant, D., The “Hippias Major.” Cambridge, 1928.

Taylor, pp. 29-34.

NOTES

The genuineness of the “Greater Hippias” is still debated : The dialogue is
considered spurious by, among others, Wilamowitz, II2, 328 Gomperz,
Gr . 77/., II, 283; Pohlenz, pp. 123 ff.; Jowett; Zilles, Hermes , LIII (1918),
50, n. 1. On the other hand, it is accepted as Platonic by Taylor, pp. 29-34;
Apelt, Plat. Aufs ., pp. 222 ff.; Friedlander, II, 105 ff., etc. For a more ex¬
haustive list cf. D. Tarrant, pp. x ff.

Meets the j air Hippias: kclKos is little more than a form of greeting, or con¬
ventional compliment. Cf. Prot. 362 A and its ironical use by Theramenes in
Xen. Hell. II. 3, 56.

Ambassador to the Peloponnesus: On Sophists as ambassadors cf. Nestle,
Prot., pp. 9-10.

281 C Abstained jrom politics: Cf. Euthyd. 306 B; on Apol. 31 C ff.; and
Rep. 496 CD (Loeb).

281 D, 282 B Made great progress: The question whether the ancients
had our idea of progress has been much and sometimes idly discussed. Cf.
the recent book of J. B. Bury, widely reviewed. Wilamowitz (I, 80) finds the
idea in Prot. 326-27. Cf. Polyb. IV. 56; Seneca Nat. quaest. VII. 25. 5: “Ve-
niet tempus, quo posteri nostri tarn aperta nos nescisse mirentur.”

282 A Have passed away: For the Gorgian figure cf. Class. Phil., XVII
(1922), 262 (on Euthyd. 304 E), and on Symp. 185 C.

282 CD How much money I have made: Cf. Meno 91 D. For other ref¬
erences to the Sophists' taking pay, cf. Laches 186 C; Prot. 31 1 B, 328 B,
349 A; Cratyl. 384 B, 391 BC; Meno 91 B; Apol. 20 A; Gorg. 519 C, 520 C;
Theaet. 167 CD; Soph. 223 A, 231 D, 233 B; Theaet. 161 DE; Ale. 1 119 A;
Rep. 337 D; Theag. 128 A. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 2. 6-8, I. 6. 5 and 13; Isoc.

47*

HIPPIAS MAJOR— NOTES

473

Against the Sophists 3-4, 7, 13; Antid. 155. Cf. Mill, IV, 266, where he exag¬
gerates but, p. 269, corrects himself. Cf. Nestle, op. cit ., p. 9, on the whole
question.

283-84 Minos and the “ Cratylus Cf. Cratyl. 429 B; Minos 3 14 E. Cf.
von Arnim, Stoics , I. 12. 33; 3. 42; 3. 158; 3. 78; Cic. De leg. II. 11.

286 A j/tf j a beautiful lecture: Cf. Prot. 347 AB. On lectures of the Soph¬
ists cf. Nestle, op. cit.y p. 9.

286 AB Beautifully phrased: tols ovopaci. Cf. Apol. 17 C; supra, 282 B;
Euthyd. 304 E; Dummler’s comparison {Akademica, p. 272) of Isoc. IV. 9
proves nothing.

286 C Good judges of a speech: Observe Kpivai a? a term of literary criti¬
cism. Cf. Isoc. XV. 204 and Shorey, <F6<ns, M eXerrj, , TAP A, XL

(1910), 198-99.

286 C Evasively replies: Cf. on Lysis 205 AB.

286 C When he praises: Right and wrong praise and blame is a favorite
topic of Plato. Cf. Crito 47 B; Laches 181 B, 182 D; Gorg. 483 BC; Symp.
195 A, 198 DE; Phaedr. 265 C; Menex. 234E-235A; Theaet. 177 B; Polit.
283 C; Rep. 402 A, 492 BC; Laws 638 C, 639 A, 672 A, 823 C, 829 E, 870 A,
876 B, 957 CD; Ale. II 143 BC; Minos 318 E.

286 C Asks him rudely: Cf. Prot. 355 C 8; Gorg. 466 A; Erast. 132 BC
and passim.

286 D Hippias ’ coming is opportune ( els kcl\ov): Cf. Meno 89 E; Prot.
340 E; Symp. 174 E; Phaedo 76 E; Theag. 122 A. Cf. Xen. Symp. I. 3.

286 E Keeping up the fiction: For this Socratic device of attributing his
argument to an anonymous personage, cf. Prot . 31 1 B, 355 CD; Ale. 1 106 C;
Thompson on Meno "j'l C; Meno 74 B ff.; Rep. 332 C (Loeb), 337 B, 341 E,
420 CD; Gorg. 450 E; Phaedo 87 D; Theaet. 165 D, 200 AB; Eurip. Phoen.
580. Cf. also on Symp. 201 E.

286 E Slight thing: Cf. Meno 71 E; Laches 190 E; Prot. 329 D. Cf. Xen.
Mem. IV. 2. 31; I. 2. 42.

Ayiticipates the “Meno"\ Cf. infra , 294 B, with Phaedo 102 B-E. For
rpoirWy 295 D 6, cf. Meno 73 C; 299 D 3, rw i)8v elvaiy cf. Meno 72 B 4. Cf.
299 E. 2, cLTTOpXeTOVTes.

287 AB Imply the theory of ideas: Cf. on Euthyph. 6 D. Cf. 286 D, avrd
rd kcl\6v.

287 DE Theaetetus or even Polus: Cf. Meno 71 E; Euthyph. 5 D f$.\Theaet.
146 CD.

288 A 9 If beauty is: For the definition as a hypothesis cf. on Euthyph.
9 DE. We cannot infer that every Platonic idea as such is a hypothesis. Cf.
on Phaedo 100 B.

288 D Such vulgar words: Cf. the homely figures in Apol. 30 E; Phaedr.
230 D; Euthyd. 278 BC; Rep. 432 D; Phaedo 99 B. Cf. also Gorg. 491 A;
Symp. 221 E; Lysis 209 D; Theaet. 193 C 5. Cf. Xen. Mem. III. 8. 6. For this
and his irony Zeno called Socrates scurram Atticum (Cic. Nat. deor. I. 34).

288 D Just one of the rabble: avpiperos Pohlenz thinks a mark of spurious¬
ness. Cf. Gorg. 489 C; Theaet. 152 C.

474

WHAT PLATO SAID

288 D 5 Only for the truth: Socrates can speak only the truth. Cf. Apol.
17 BC; Ion 532 DE; Symp. 199 AB.

289 A The most beautiful ape: Pope’s ‘‘And shew’d a Newton as we show
an ape” may be from this. Cf. Heraclit., frag. 82 (Diels). Cf. the Creole
proverb: “The monkey never says her little one is ugly.”

Parody of Aristotle' s definition of happiness: Ar. Eth. 1101 a 15; Newman,
Ar. Pol., p. 1 1 6. Cf. the definition of an eminent modern philosopher: “A
good life in sum is a continuous .... process of conflict and reintegration in
which habit, impulse and intelligence mingle their lights and modify and rein¬
force one another.”

297 E Noblest senses: The reason finally given (303 E), because they are
the least harmful, suggests the doctrine of the negativity of the pleasures of
sense. Cf. Phileb. 51 DE; Ar. Eth . Nic. 1118 a 3.

294 E Enters into the game: Cf. Euthyd. 299 C, 299 E, 300 B; Prot.
341 A flF.; Phaedr. 236 DE; Polit. 271 A, 271 C 3; Ion, passim . Cf. on Theaet.
189 C

295 A Than certitude itself: Cf. Milton’s “surer to prosper than pros¬
perity,” and his “as frigid as frigidity itself”; Sappho’s “more golden than
gold”; and Dio’s “happier than happiness”; Eurip. Hec. 785-86.

299 D Pleasures differ only quantitatively: Cf. Prot . 356 A; Phileb.
36 C 8 flF., 38 A flF.; Grote, II, 46.

300 C 10 Dim apprehensions: Cf. Theaet. 155 A, (paapara.

301 DE Both two , though neither is: On both and each cf. Theaet. 185 A 8;
Soph. 243 E; Rep. 524 B 6-7; Parmen. 143 C. Aristotle seems to refer to this
passage (Pol. 1261 b 29): “For all and both and odd and even because of
their ambiguity (8 lcl to 8ltt6v) /cat ev rots XoYots epicmKovs iroiel avWoyta-
povsP Cf. also ibid. 1264 b 19.

304 A The cheese parings and splinterings: Cf. Gorg. 48 6 C, 497 BC.

304 A 8 To plan and shape a fine speech: KaraaTrjaapevov is technical. Cf.
Isoc. IV. 66; Cratyl. 425 A. For the technical use of the noun KaraoTaoLs cf.
Ernesti, Lexicon technologiae Graecorum rhetoricae , and Volkmann, RJietorik
d. Griechen u. Romer (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 149-50, who points out that this
use of the word is very old, having been used by Corax according to Syrian
Rh. Gr., IV, 575, and that then it denoted “iiberhaupt da, Prooemium.”

A few un-Platonic expressions in the dialogue:

290 E 4 peppepos

290 E 9 is thought by some a reminiscence of Rep. 372 C 3

291 A 8 cpvpeaOaL is unobjectionable. Cf. Laws 950 A; Gorg. 465 C; Phaedo
101 E

292 CD is too gross and yeyoovew impossible

293 A flaW’ els panaplav is thought too Aristophanic

300 C 4 r)8'ews ye

301 B 5, the expression is overloaded.

ION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruns, Ivo, Das literarische Portrlit der Griechen, pp. 351-56.

Friedlander, II, 128-36
Grote, II, 124-37.

Janell, “Quaestiones Platonicae,” Jahrb. /. k/ass. Philo!., Suppl., XXVI,
324-36. Leipzig, 1901.

Neuhofer, R., Platonuv “Ion.” Brunn, 1908.

Pavlu, Josef, Zum pseudoplatonischen “Jon” “Mitt, des Vereins klass. Phil.

in Wien” (1927), pp. 22-35.

POHLENZ, pp. I86-89.

Raeder, pp. 92-94.

Taylor, pp. 38-41.

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 132-34; II, 32-46.

Zeller, E., Zeitschr. f. Alterthumsw. (1851), pp. 256 ff.; Philos, d. Gr., II,
14, 480 ff.

NOTES

Nature , instinct , or inspiration: Cf. on Meno 99 E (poets inspired); Phaedr.
245 A; Apol. 22 C; Laws 719 C; Ion 533 E ff.

Unworthy of Plato: The authenticity of the Ion has been questioned by
Schleiermacher, Ast, Zeller (pp. 480 ff.), Ritter ( Untersuchungen ilber Platon ,
pp. 95 ff.), Windelband ( Gesch . d. abendl. Philos .4, p. 122, n. 1), and of late
by J. Pavlu (op. cit .; cf. also Zeitschr. f. osterr. Gymn ., LX [1909], 668 ff.).
However, the majority of modern scholars consider it as genuinely Platonic.
Cf. especially Janell, Jahrb. f. klass. Phil., Suppl., XXVI (1901), 324 ff.;
O. Apelt, Plat. Aufsatze , p. 65, n. 1 ; E. Meyer, Forschungen zuralten Geschichte,
II, 174, n. 2; F. Dummler, Antisthenica, pp. 27 ff.

534 B Winged, divine thing: So is the bee (Pindar, frag. 123). Cf. La Fon¬
taine’s allusion:

Papillon de Parnasse, et semblable aux abeilles,

A qui le bon Platon compare nos merveilles,

Je suis chose 16g£re et vole a tout sujet.

533 D Comparison of Homer to a ?nagnet: Cf. Eurip., frag. 567 (571). Cf.
Shelley’s translation:

For not only does this stone possess the power of attracting iron rings, but it can
communicate to them the power of attracting other rings: so that you may see some¬
times a long chain of rings, and other iron substances, attached and suspended one to
the other by this influence. And as the power of the stone circulates through all the
links of this series, and attaches each to each, so the Muse, communicating through
those whom she has first inspired, to all others capable of sharing in the inspiration,
the influence of that first enthusiasm, creates a chain and a succession.

475

WHAT PLATO SAID

476

Xenophon: Symp . III. 6; cf. Mem. IV. 2. 10.

534 D One eloquent speech: Cf. Tynnichos; Porphyr. Be abstinent. I. 18;
and Stallb., note. Cf. “Single speech’* Hamilton; Thomas Dunn English’s
one poem, “Don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?”; Henry Kirke’s
“White Star of Bethlehem”; Christopher Smart’s “One ecstatic moment.”
Onderdonk, pp. 265 ff.; Sir Edward Cook, More Literary Recreations , p. 260.

536 E ff. Insistence on the definition: For the characteristic Platonic de¬
mand for specification of vague claims cf. Euthyph. 13 E; Laches 192 E, 194 E;
Prot. 31 1 B, 312 D; Gorg. 449 E, 451 A, 453 C; Charm. 165 C ff.; Rep. 332 C,
333 A, 428 BC, 505 B; Laws 961 E; Ale. I 124 E ff.; Friedlander, II, 7.

537 AB A charioteer: Cf. Xen. Symp . IV. 6, Homer teaches to be a chariot¬
eer.

541 CD Mistaken for the true statesman: Cf. Polit. 304-5 ; Euthyd. 290 D;
Laws 922 A.

539 E In the same style: Cf. Gorg. 466 A. Cf. Hipp. Min. 369 A, 371 CD.
His own defective memory: Cf. Meno 71 C; Prot. 334 CD; and Alcibiades’
doubt of it in 336 D.

535 E Emotions which he shares with his audience: Cf. Laws 800 D; Xen.
Symp. III. 11.

The “Laws”-. Laws 682 A, 951 B, 666 D, 817 A, 945 C, 629 B.

The “Republic” : Rep . 331 E, 383 C, 540 C. Cf. also Soph. 216 B; Phaedr.
242 A.

Interesting suggestions: E.g., the distinction between the thought and the
diction of the poets (530 C). Cf. Rep. 601 B; Ar. Poetics 1448 b 20. Socrates
repeats the word 8lIli >ololv, “thought,” in the phrase, “The rhapsode must be
the interpreter of the thought,” and Ion, catching at the mere word, replies,
“No one has ever had so many happy thoughts about Homer as I.”

Socrates postpones to another time the exhibition of his interlocutor’s
talents (530 E). Cf. on Lysis 205 AB.

The appeal to the man who knows (531 DE). Cf. on Laches 184 DE.

The knowledge of opposites is one (532 A). Cf. Rep. 409 D, 333 E; Phaedo
97 D; Laws 816 DE; Apelt on Hipp. Min. III. 46; Ar. Met. 1004 a 9, 1061 a 19;
Top. 1 10 b 30; Diels, II3, 344 (Dialexeis 8); Apelt on Ion III. 126; Friedlander,
II, 144; Wil., I, 135, n. 1.

Poetics, TroLrjTiKTj , conceived as a single art or science (532 C). Cf. 534 C;
Sy??2p. 223 D; Ar. Poet. 1447a and passim.

Socrates can only speak the truth (532 DE). Cf. Apol. 17 B; Symp. 198 D;
Hipp. Maj. 288 D.

Ion cannot contend against Socrates in argument, but the fact remains
(533 C). Cf. Rep. 487 B-D and supra , 532 BC.

Poetic madness (533-34). Cf. Phaedr. 245 A ff.; Apol. 22 C; Laws 719 C,
682 A.

Oeiq. /JLoipq. (534 C). Cf. on Meno 99 E.
carrei, etc. (535 A 3). Cf. on Meno 86 B.

The continuation of the figure of the magnet (535 E-536). Cf. for other
recurrent figures, Theaet. 150, 151 B, 151 E, 157 CD, 160 E, 162 A, 184 B 1,

ION— NOTES

477

199 B, 210 B; Phileb. 22 C, 33 C; Polit . 291 AB, 303 CD, 305 E-306 A,
309 B, 310 E; Euthyph. 1 1 C, 15 B; Laches 193 D; Laws 645 D, 900 C.

Homer knows everything (536 E). Cf. 541 B; Rep. 598 C-E; and Andrew
Lang’s rhapsody, Letters to Dead Authors , XXV.

The special epyov or function of each art (537 C). Cf. Loeb, Rep., on

335 D-

Kara Travwv of universal predication (537 D). Cf. 538 A; Meno 76 A 5, Kara
7r avros. Cf. Tim. 64 A; Soph. 226 C; Charm. 169 A.

How we come to distinguish and name specific arts and sciences (537 D 5).
A Homeric quotation also used in Rep. 405 E, 538 C.

Kpivai as a term of literary criticism (538 D).

& 7rpe7rei the becoming, as a term of literary criticism (540 B). Cf. E. E.
Sikes, The Greek View of Poetry, pp. 164, 166, 200.

The generalization of rule to include political rule and the rule of the
craftsman in the sphere of his craft (540 B). Cf. Rep. I. 340 E, 341 D, 342 C
(Loeb).

TapaivovvTL : anticipating the term of rhetoric TapaLveacs for a general’s
speech.

The general’s art (540 D). Cf. 541 CD; Laches 198 E; Phileb. 56 E 2.

The metaphor of Proteus (541 E) which Plato was perhaps the first to use.
Cf. Euthyd. 288 B; Euthyph. 15 D. Other literary commonplaces perhaps first
found in Plato are the figure of the Hydra’s head, Rep. 426 E; Euthyd. 297 C;
Soph. 240 C 4; the ivory gate, Charm. 173 A ( Od . XIX. 560); the deus ex
machina , Cratyl. 425 D.

Some of these examples are trifles inserted for completeness. Collectively
they illustrate again the danger of ignoring the unity of Plato’s thought in
the interpretation of his seemingly most trivial work.

CHARMIDES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, pp. 109-23.

Croiset, A., Platon: CEuvres completes , ed. Bude (Paris, 1922), Vol. I.
Friedlander, II, 67-80.

Grote, II, 153-71.

Kohm, J., “Die Beweisfiihrung in Platons Charmides,” Festschr. f. Th. Gom-
perz (Wien, 1902), pp. 37-52.

Mutschmann, “Zu Platons Charmides ” Hermes , XLVI (1911), 473-78.
Natorp, pp. 23-29.

Newhall, B., Plato : “ Charmides ” “ Laches ” and “Lysis” New York, 1900.
Pohlenz, pp. 40-57.

Raeder, pp. 97-99.

Rick, H., “Der Dialog Charmides” Archivf. Gesch. d. Philos., XXIX (1916),
211-34.

Ritter, I, .343-59.

Schirlitz, C., “Der Begriff des Wissens vom Wissen im Charmides ” Jahrb.

j. klass. Phil., CLV (1897), 451-76, 5x3"37-
Taylor, pp. 47-57.

Wilamowitz, I, 1 89—98 ; II, 63-67.

NOTES

153 A In the first person: Cf. Lysis, Prot., Rep.

In 176 B it makes Socrates a self-praiser, as in Prot. 361 DE; Apol. 32
and passim.

153 A Inclosure of Basile: Cf. Frazer, Pausanias , II, 58.

153 B Chaerephon: Cf. Apol. 20 E, 21 A; Gorg. 447 A. Chaerephon of the
deme of Sphettos was a faithful pupil and an admirer of Socrates and one of
the most important members of the Socratic circle. He was ridiculed for his
personal appearance and eccentricities by Aristophanes, Eupolis, Cratinus
(cf. schol. on Apol. 20 A), and under the Thirty he was sent into exile, but in
403 b.c., at the restoration of democracy, he came back with Thrasybulus.
It was he who received the oracle calling Socrates the wisest of men. Cf.
Natorp in Pauly-Wiss., Ill, 2028; Apelt, Platon: Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. Ill:
Charm., p. 60. .

153 D Intelligence and beauty: Cf. Theaet. 143 D; Lysis 204 B, 207 A;
Euthyd. 273 A; Taine, Les jeunes gens de Platon.

154 A Out in society: ovttco ev Cf. Lysis 209 A; Laches 200 C; Eu¬

thyd. 306 D.

154 B Weakness for the fair: Cf. Thompson on Meno 76 C; Symp. 216 D;
Erast. 133 A; Xen. Oecon. VI. 15. Socrates is an expert only in love; cf. on

478

CHARMIDES— NOTES

479

Lysis 204 BC. For the judgment of Zopyrus the physiognomist on Socrates’
sensuous temperament cf. Cic. Tusc. IV. 37; DefatoY ; Alex. Aphrodis. Defato
VI. 18 (Orelli). For \eu/o) aradjjLT] (154 B 9) cf. Otto, p. 1 1 ; Soph., frag. 307 N;
Pearson, frag. 330.

154 D Greek distinction: Cf. Prot. 352 A. Cf. Lewis, Statius Thebaid , VI,
807-8:

Though all was fair nor aught admired the most,

His face was in his graceful body lost.

155 A Engage in discussion: 8ta\ky eaOcu is not technically “dialectic” but
no sharp line can be drawn, and it is idle to attempt to date the dialogues by
the “first” occurrence of dialectics in this or that sense. Cf. Euthyd. 275 C,
290 C 5; Meno 75 D 3-4, and by implication Laches 194 A, 21 1 BC; Charm.
162 E. Cf. Xen. Mem. IV. 5. 11-12; IV. 6. 1. Cf. also on Laws 9 66 C and
Phileb. 58 D; Parmen. 135 C 2; Phaedr. 2 66 C i; Unity , p. 74.

155 E Incantation: Cf. the saying attributed to Voltaire, that incanta¬
tions will kill a flock of sheep if administered together with a sufficient
quantity of arsenic.

156 E Mistake of Greek physicians: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1102 a 19; Galen
apud von Arnim, Stoics , II, 137. For Plato’s interest in medicine cf. Phaedr.
270 C; Tim. 82 ff.; Rep. 405-7 (Loeb); Laws 720 A flf., 857 CD; Polit. 293 B,
298 A; Gorg. 456 B, 480 C, 521 E. Cf. F. Poschenrieder, Die Platonischen Dia-
loge in ihrem Verhdltnis zu den Hippokratischen Schrijten (Metten, 1882),
Progr.; M. Pohlenz, “Plippokrates de prisca medicina,” Hermes , LI II (1918),
405 ff.; E. Hoffmann, “Plato und die Medizin,” Sokrates , VIII (1920), 301 f.
Cf. also his Anhang to the 5th ed. of Zeller’s Philos, d. Gr., II, 1, 1070-86;
W. Capelle, “Zur Hippokratischen Frage,” Hermes, LVII (1922), 247-65.

156 E Soul .... source: Cf. Menex. 247 E ff.; Epin. 984 B 6; Rep. 403 D
(Loeb); Emerson, The Poet , in it.; George Eliot, Felix Holt: “We are all of us
made graceful by the inward presence of what we believe to be a generous
purpose, etc.”; Schiller, Wallensteins Tod, III, 13: “Es ist der Geist der sich
den Korper baut”; Burton, Anat. of Mel.: “Oculum non curabis sine toto
capite, nec caput sine toto corpore, nec totum corpus sine anima”; Arnold,
Lit. and Dogma, p. 129, who refers to the Charmides.

157 B Submit his soul to treatment: Cf. Gorg. 475 D, 480 C. For the
thought cf. Rep. 425 E, 426 AB (Loeb); Laches 188 AB.

157 C Socrates' teaching: For Socrates as a teacher cf. Laches 200 CD.
But cf. on Euthyph. 3 C; Apol. 33 A.

158 A Call happiness: Xeyo/ierji evdaLfiovia. Cf. Laws 695 A, 783 A; Rep.
612 A. Cf. Xeyo/ieva ayaOa, Rep. 491 C, 495 A; Laws 661 C. Cf. Ka\ov/jLeva,
Rep. 442 A; Phaedo 64 D.

158 A Already has temperance: Cf. Lysis 223 B, they are friends but can¬
not define friendship. Cf. Laches 193 E 3.

158 D Inquire together: Koivfj aKeTreov. Cf. Prot. 330 B; Theaet. 1 5 1 E;
Meno 86 C, 91 A, 81 E; Cratyl. 384 C; Crito 46 D, 48 D; Minos 315 E;
Laches 201 A, 187 D; Friedlander, II, 174 on Crito 46. Friedlander (I, 164)

480

WHAT PLATO SAID

discusses it as part of Socratic irony and quotes Charm. 158 D; Ale. 1 124 C,
127 E; Meno; and Laches 201 AB.

158 E Presence: The word belongs to the terminology of the theory of
ideas, but is not used with reference to it here. Cf. Isoc. Antid. 229. Cf.
160 D 7; Laches 189 E; Gorg. 506 D, 497 E; Euthyd. 301 A; and for the more
technical use, Phaedo 100 D ff. Cf. Friedlander, II, 193.

158 E Perception: For the psychology cf. Phaedo 96 B, though the “per¬
ception” here is that of Locke’s “inner sense.”

159 A For a definition: Cf. Laches 190 D; Lysis 212 A; Meno 71 D; Tlie-
aet. 146 C; Gorg. 449 C fF.

159 A Can tell it: Cf. Laches 190C, 194 B; Theaet. 206 D 7-9; Laws
9 66 B; Phileb. 62 A 2; Xen. Mem. IV. 6 1.

159 B Orderly and quiet fashion: For the conjunction of <rc o^poaovn] and
aid a>s cf. Isoc. Areopag. 48. Cf. Dante, Purg ., Ill, 10:

.... la fretta

Che l’onestade ad ogni atto dismaga;

Soph. El. 872.

159 B Difficult to define: Cf. on Rep. 430 E (Loeb); on Laws 627 A, 696 D;
Friedlander, II, 72, 79-80; J. T. Sheppard, The Oedipus Tyrannus , Introd.,
chap, iv, with Shorey in Class. Phil., XV, 396.

159 D Fine and good thing: Cf. Laches 192 BC; Rep. 333 E (Loeb); Meno
87 D; Prot, 349 E; Minos 314 D. Cf. my “Idea of Good,” pp. 202 ff.; Unity ,
n. 78; Xen. Mem. IV. 6. 10.

161 B Does it matter who said it? Cf. Phaedr. 275 BC with Laws 881 A 2.
Cf. Sen. Ep. II. 2. 17, “Et quid interest quis dixerit? omnibus dixit.” Cf.
“Never mind who is refuted,” Charm. 166 DE; Phaedo 91 C; Rep. 595 C.

161 B t a. eavTOv TTparreLv: Cf. Tim . 72 A; Gorg. 526 C; Polit. 307 E; Apol.
33 A; ReP- 37° A, 400 E. 4°6 E, 423 D, 433 B, 441 DE, 443 B and C, 496 D,
550 A, 586 E; Phaedr. 247 A; Ale. I 127 AB; Ep. IX. 357 E. Cf. Xen. Mem.
II. 9. 1; Lysias XIX. 18; XXVI. 3. Cf. Unity , n. 77; Friedlander, II, 72.

161 E Division of labor: Cf. Rep. 443 CD (Loeb); also 370 BC, 374 A-D,
394 E ff., 423 D, 433 A. Cf. 420 D, 421 C; Prot. 322 C; Laws 846 D ff.,
807 CD; Ale. II 147 AB; Erast. 135 C. Cf. Xen. Mem III. 5. 21 Warfare be¬
gins to be a specialty; Cyr. VIII. 2. 5. Critics for various reasons object to
reading the idea of the division of labor into the Charmides. But it is there,
and the failure of Critias to make the distinction made in the Republic is the
cause of his discomfiture. Cf. Loeb, Rep. I, Introd., xiv.

162 A As a riddle: Cf. Rep. 332 B (Loeb); Lysis 214 D; Phaedo 69 C;
Theaet. 152 C, 194 C; Ale. II 147 B and D. Cf. Rep. 479 C; supra , 161 C,
164 E 6. For the transfer of the thesis cf. on Hipp. Min. 365 D.

162 E May yet be sober-minded: Socrates takes sophrones in a wrong
sense, but the interlocutor can’t clear it up.

163 A In a distinction: For a similar evasion in the game of question and
answer cf. Prot. 341 B ff. For the contentious temper cf. Thrasymachus in
Rep. I; Laches 200 AB; and infra on 166 A.

163 AB Make and do: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1140 a 1; Apelt, Dial., Ill, 63.

CHARM I DES— NOTES

481

Cf. the ingenious comments of Pohlenz (p. 52, n. 17) on Plato’s intention here
of answering the calumny of Polycrates that Socrates read immoral meanings
into the poets.

163 B Work is no reproach : Works and Bays 31 1. Cf. Xen. Mem. 1. 2.

56~S7 ■ , „ „ ,

163 D Allow any terminology: Cf. on Meno 87 BC. For oti av (frepys

Tovvopa cf. Ar. Met. 1062 a 16.

164 AB Desirable to heal: Cf. Laches 195 C ff.; the pilot in Gorg. 511-12;
and perhaps Euthyd. 291 C 9.

164 DE Know thyself: Cf. Miss Eliza Wilkins’ Chicago dissertation. Cf.
Phaedr. 229 E 6; Ale. I 124 A, 129 A, 133 C; Erast. 138; Grote, II, 114. Cf.
Tim. 72 A; Prot. 343 B; Phileb. 48 C; Isoc. Panath. 230. Cf. infra, 169 E;
Xen. Mem. III. 9. 6; Cic. Be fin. V. 16.

165 AB Wipe the slate: Cf. Prot. 349 C 6, 332 A, 359 A; Theaet. 164 C,
187 AB. Cf. Eurip. Hippol. 288-89. Cf. infra , 167 AB; Polit. 268 D 5.

165 B Only a seeker: Cf. Cratyl. 391 A; Laches 200 E; Meno 80 C. Cf.
supra on 157 C and 158 D.

166 A Of what they are arts: Cf. 168 A; Rep. 438 C, and for 166 A 6 cf.
Gorg. 451 C.

166 A Arguing for victory: Cf. Theaet. 167 E; Laches 200 AB; 196 AB; cf.
supra , 163 A. For complaints of Socrates cf. on Meno 80 A.

166 C Is incidental: Cf. Prot. 348 C; Gorg. 453 B, 457 D ff.; Phaedo 91 C.
166 D His own sake: Cf. Soph. 265 A 1 ; Apol. 33 A 7; Rep. 527 E-528 A.
Cf. also perhaps on Crito 49 D; Phaedr. 276 D.

In other things: So Theaet. 188 E 3, /cat aWoOc.

167-68 Upon itself: Cf. Rep. 438 C. Wilamowitz (II, 65, n. 2) errs. Gas¬
sendi argues that nothing operates on itself. Cf. Euthyd. 292 D 3; Stcnzel,
Dial., p. 11. Cf. Epic. Biss. I. 1.

167-68 Elsewhere shown: AJP , XXII, 160-64 on Ar. Be an. 429 b 26 ff.
Cf. Euthyd. 287 CD.

Of the “Parmenides” \ Cf. note on Parmen. 129-30 in Class. Phil., XXVI,
91-93. Wilamowitz (II, 65) errs.

169 C As a yawn: Cf. the figure in Meno 80 A for aivopia.

169 C Socrates proposes: Socrates leads; cf. supra , 164 A, and on Euthyph.
11 E.

169 D Postpone: Cf. Pohlenz, p. 47. Cf. Rep. 430 C, Prot. 357 B, 361 E;
Phileb. 33 BC; Rep. 4 66 A, Tim. 50 C; Cratyl. 431 A. Cf. Phileb. 50 D, avpcov.
This real or pretended postponement of a point in the argument differs from
the ironical use of the word eiaavOcs. Cf. on Lysis 205 AB.

169 D For the sake of the argument: This is particularly frequent in the
Charmides. Cf. 167 B; Gorg. 453 C, 454 C, 501 C, 510 A; Ale. I 106 A; Rep.
350 E-351 A, 437 A. It is often found also in the Attic orators. Cf. Lucret.
III. 540, “Si iam libeat concedere falsum.”

169 E Ca/i and cannot do: Cf. Theaet. 210 C. Cf. supra on 164 DE. Cf.
Meno 84 BC.

170 B Really another polemic against universal knowledge: Cf. Soph. 233 A
and on Rep. 598 C-E (Loeb).

482

WHAT PLATO SAID

171 DE, 172 D Platonic principle: Laws 732 A; Ale. I 117CD; Xen.
Mem. IV. 2. 26. Cf. Unity , p. 17. For a/saOia, cf. on Lysis 218 AB; Symp.
203-4.

173 D Do and fare well: Cf. on Rep. 353 E (Loeb). Cf. Gorg. 507 C.
Plato liked to use the ambiguity of ev irpaTTeiv , “do weir’ and “fare well,” as
a rhetorical conclusion to his argument. The argument never really depends
on it. So an English writer says, “Well doing is the fruit of doing well.”
Aristotle does not disdain a similar equivocation {Pol. 1323 b3i). This al¬
leged fallacy is the only one that most writers who accuse Plato of bad reason¬
ing quote. Cf. Grote, II, 214; Wilamowitz, II, 168, quoting Euthyd. 281 C
and Gorg. 507 E, and misapprehending Laws 657 C.

174 B 11 In a circle: Cf. Laws 65 9 D, 688 B; Gorg. 517 C, 521 E; Symp .
187 D; Hipp. Maj. 303 E; Euthyph. 15 B; Ale. I no D; Hipparchus 231 C,
232 A; Theaet. 200 A; Laws 682 E; Grote, II, 1 61 ; Cleitophon 410 A.

175 B Lawgiver gave the name: Cf. Cratyl. 388 DE, 389 A and D, 390 A,
393 E> 404 B.

175 E Poor investigator: Socratic “irony” or courtesy. Cf. Meno 96 D;
Laches 190 E; Rep. 392 D; Phileb. 23 D; Prot. 340 DE; Lysis 223 B. Cf. also
on Phaedo 90 D.

LACHES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ammendola, Giuseppe, Platone: II “ Lachete .” Napoli, 1928.
von Arnim, pp. 1-37 (with Protagoras).

Croiset, A., Platon: (Euvres completes , Vol. II. Paris, 1922.

Friedlander, II, 37-49.

Grote, II, 138-52.

Joel, K., “Zu Platons Laches ,” Hermes , XLI (1906), 310-18.

Meister, R., “Thema und Ergebnis des Platonischen Laches Wien. Stud.,
XLI I (1920), 9-23, 103-14.

Natorp, pp. 18-23.

POHLENZ, pp. 23-39.

Raeder, pp. 95-97.

Ritter, I, 284-97.

Taylor, pp. 57-64.

Wilamowitz, I, 183-87.

NOTES

During the Peloponnesian War: But that would make Socrates, who says
he is young, about fifty years old. Cf. Prot. 317 C, 361 E, where Socrates is
young. Cf. 181 D.

178 B Divine their wishes: Cf. Isoc. Antid. 43. Cf. Gorg. 487 B.

179 C Attend to their education: Cf. Meno 93 B-94 E. Cf. Laws 695 A on
Persian education. For empeXeiaO ai (179 A) cf. on Apol. 29 DE. Cf. Isoc.
Areopagit. 50 for the idea that the fathers of the great age neglected their sons,
and De pace 92.

179 D Spoiled: Cf. Laws 695 B 3; Prot. 327 E; Euthyph. n E; Meno 7 6
B 8; Ale. I 1 14 A 7; Isoc. II. 2, and the idea without the word, VII. 50.

179 E Recommended: Cf. Symp. 176 E 10.

Progressive ( Nicias ): In the Platonic dialogue, though not in real life.
185 B 10 To the previous question: e£ apxys. Cf. Laws 626 D 5, €7r’ apxyv.
The Athenian always goes back to first principles. Cf. Phaedr. 2 67 D 2,
264 A 5. Cf. 189 E 3.

180 BC Haunts places: 180 C 2, 6iarpi/3as. Cf. Charm. 153 A 3; Symp.
223 D 1 1 ; Euthyd. 271 A; Xen. Mem. I. 1. 10. Cf. on Lysis 204 A; “pursuits,”
Apol. 37 C; Gorg. 484 E; Rep. 475 D; Isoc. XV. 2. The Cynic “diatribe” is
a later development.

180 D Damon: Cf. Rep. 400B; Ale. I 118 C; infra , 197 D, 200 AB; Isoc.
Antid. 235. On Socrates' recommending another teacher, cf. Theaet. 151 B;
Theag. 127E; Friedlander, II, 29.

181 A This is the very Socrates: Cf. Theaet. 148 E; Theag. 126 D; Charm .
156 A; Meno 79 E; Lysis 21 1 A.

483

484

WHAT PLATO SAID

181 A Does credit to: opQdis. Cf. Sophocles Antig. 190.

181 AB Delium : Cf. Apol. 28 E and Alcibiades’ account, Symp. 221 A.
The dramatic date, then, is later than 424 and earlier than 418 when Laches
was killed in the battle of Mantinea.

181 B Praise indeed: Cf. Naevius apud Cic. Tusc. IV. 31. §67, laetus sum
laudari me abs te pater a laudato viro, “Praise from Sir Hubert/’

181 E Out of mischief: Cf. Isoc. Panath. 27; Antid. 287; Terence Andria
57. Cf. Inge, Lay Thoughts of a Dean , p. 62, “The universities are a sort of
lunatic asylum for keeping young men out of mischief.”

182 A Athletes: Cf. Laws 829E-830A; Rep. 403 E, 416 D, 422 B,
521 D, 543 B. Cf. also Soph. 231 E; Phileb. 41 B.

182 D Is indeed a science: Cf. my note on Rep. 488 E in Class. Re v.y XX
(1906), 247-48. and my emendation of Gorg. 503 D in Class. Phil., X (1915),
325-26.

183 B Tabooed: a/3arov. Cf. Isoc. Hel. 58. Cf. Hipp. Maj. 283 B ff.; Ion
541 c 5.

183 C Fatality: clxnrep eir'iTTibes, Cicero’s dedita opera, De or. I. 20. For
theory versus practice cf. further Ar. Protrep ., frag. 52; Polyb. XX. 72; Ar.
Poet. 1452 a 7.

183 D Exhibition: Cf. on Gorg. 447 B.

183 D Exceptional: For the quip cf. Laws 629 C 2.

184 A 6 Contain their laughter: Cf. Macaulay, Horatius , “And even the
ranks of Tuscany/Could scarce forbear to cheer.” Cf. Ar. Frogs 45; Horace
Ars poet. 5, “Risum teneatis amici.”

184. C Failed to justify it: Cf. Eurip. Medea 294 ff.; Ovid Met. XIII. 105-
6, 112-14.

184 DE Expert knowledge: Cf. Gorg. 490 A; Crito 47 B; Laws 659 A; Ion
531 E; Soph. 233 A. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 1.9. Cf. also on Charm. 171 DE.

184 DE Not a majority of votes: Cf. Gorg. 475 E; Cratyl. 437 D. Cf. also
Gorg. 471 E; Hipp. Maj. 288 A.

185 A So grave a question: Cf. Rep. 344 DE, 352 D, 578 C; Gorg. 458 AB,
500 C; Laws 714 B, 688 C; Prot. 313 A; Tim. 26 A. For the phrase irepl t&v
pLeyiaruv, cf. Gorg. 487 B, 527 E; Rep. 377 E, 450 D; Laws 801 C, 888 B;
Prot. 347 A; Eryx. 393 A 8; Isoc. Panath. 248; To Nic. 39; Lysias XXXIII. 3.

185 D 5 For the sake of: 'Ivetta. Cf. Lysis 218 D ff; Gorg. 467 C; schol.
Gorg. 467 C; Phileb. 53-54, where the idea is elaborately introduced as if new.
Cf. also Ar. De an. 415 b 15; Met. 1065 a 26; De gen. an. 767 b 13, 745 a 27,
778331.

186 C Fees of the Sophists: Cf. on Hipp. Maj. 282 CD. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic.
1180 b 35 ff., 1181 a 13.

186 C No teacher: For the demand, “name your teacher,” cf. Gorg.
514 C; Rep. 488 B 5; Ale. I 109 D 3. For the dichotomy, learn or discover,
cf. Theaet. 150 D; Euthyd. 285 A; Phaedo 85 C, 99 C; Prot. 320 B; Cratyl.
439 B; Rep. 618 C; Ale. I 113 E, 112 D, 106 D. Cf. Isoc. II. 17; XV. 208,
etc.; Soph., frag. 843 (Pears.); Xen. Mem. III. 9. 14-15.

187 B Corpore vili: Lit. on a Carian. Cf. Otto, Sprichworter der Griechen
und Romer, p. 75; Euthyd. 285 C.

LACHES— NOTES

485

187 B A wine-jar : For this proverb cf. Gorg. 514 E. Cf. Terence Andria
566, “istuc periclum in filia fieri gravest. ” For the idea conveyed by a differ¬
ent image, cf. Prot. 314 AB. Gomperz (. Apologie der Heilkunst, p. 99) calls
it “Ein bei den Sophisten beliebter Topos.”

189 C Too old for argument: Cf. Rep. I. 331 D(?). Cf. Theodorus in
Theaet. 162 B.

187 E Approaches Socrates : Cf. Theaet. 169 A-C. Cf. Apol. 30 CD,
30 E 3-5, 31 B; Alcibiades in Symp. 215 E-216 A; Grote, II, 141.

188 AB Words of Solon: Cf. Rep . 536 D.

188 C Misologist: Cf. on Phaedo 89 D.

188 C Pleasure to learn: Isocrates (II. 15) adds that to govern any crea¬
tures well one must love them. Cf. also Soph. Oed. Tyr. 545-46.

188 D Harmony between a man s deeds and his professions: For Dorian
harmony cf. infra, 193 D. For harmony with self cf. on Gorg. 482 BC. For
agreement of words and deeds cf. ibid. 488 AB; Laws 689 A, 653 B, 655 E,
656; Minos 320 AB; Ar. Pol. 1334 b 10. Cf. Sidney, ‘Tie said the music best
thilk powers pleased /Was sweet accord between our wit and will.”

190 B What then is the virtue: Definition first: Cf. Meno 71 B, 86 DE;
Gorg. 448 E, 463 C; Rep. 354 C (Loeb); Hipp. Maj. 286 D; Prot . 360 E-361 A;
Phaedr. 237 C, 238 D, 263 DE; Lysis 212 A; Friedlander, II, 41 and 66.

190 C That part: For parts of virtue cf. on Prot. 329 D.

190 D Relevant: relveiv. Cf. Rep. 454 D.

190 E Had in mind: For biavooviievos cf. Euthyd . 295 C; Theaet. 184 A 2.

190 E Not a definition but an instance: Cf. Meno 71 E-72 A; Theaet.
146 CD; Hipp. Maj . 287 E; Euthyph. 5 D.

191 BC Plataea: Not in Hdt. IX. 59-63. Cf. Apelt’s note. For Plato’s
real opinion as to the danger of such habit-forming practices cf. Laws 706 C.

191 DE Lure of pleasure: Cf. Laws 633 C ff.; Ep. VII. 351 A; Rep.
429 CD; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1117 a 35; Democ., frag. 214; Spenser, Faery Queene,
II, vi, 1:

A harder lesson to learn continence
In joyous pleasure than in grievous pain.

Shakespeare, Love s Labour s Lost , I, 1 :

Therefore, brave conquerors, for so you are,

That war against your own affections.

191 E In all instances: For this terminology, both of the definition and
of the idea, cf. on Euthyph. 6 D.

192 AB Definition as an example: Cf. Meno 75 B, 76 A; Theaet. 147 C,
208 D; Rep. 353 A; Hipparchus 231 A; Friedlander, II, 283.

192 A Its “isness”: Cf. Aristotle’s tl rjv elvai.

193 E In our words: So Lysis 223 B, “We are friends.” Cf. Charm. 175 E.

193 E Bids us endure: Plato, like Pindar, sometimes adapts his language
and his imagery playfully to the subject. Cf. Laws 844 A; Gorg. 505 C; Phae¬
do 73 B, 92 C; Lysis 216 D; Theaet. 146 A 7.

194 C 2 Storm-tossed: Cf. Phileb. 29 A; Theaet. 170 A; Polit. 273 D.

486

WHAT PLATO SAID

194 D Good in that in which he is wise: Cf. Ale. I 12; A; Rep. 349 E 6
(Loeb).

194 D Wisdom , your grandmother: For tto'los in this colloquial sense cf.
Gorg. 490 D; Rep. 429 C; Charm. 174 B; Euthyd. 291 A; Rivals 132 B; Rep.
330 B. Cf. Thompson on Meno 80 D; Aristoph., passim.

194 E Specific difference: For definition by genus and specific differences
cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1106 a 13. Cf. Euthyph. 1 1 E ff., Topics , 103 b 15.

I95_9^ Universal knowledge: Cf. on Ion 536 E; Euthyd. 291 B, and for
universal knowledge Rep. 598 C-E.

195-96 Nicias has some Socratic ideas: Cf. on 194 D, 195 C.

195 C For which to live: Cf. on Charm. 164 AB. Cf. the pilot in Gorg.
511-12. Von Arnim (p. 27) says this is an advance on the Protagoras.

195 C Know the good: This is the implication. Cf. supra; Charm. 174 CD.

195 DE Prophets: Plato’s attitude toward the prophets is, like that of
Euripides, usually ironical. Cf. Charm. 164 E, 174 A; infra 199 A; Euthyph.
3 E; Laws 913 B 2, Xeyofievois navrea.

196 E-197 A Crommyonian boar: Cf. Plut. Thes. 9. For the proverbial
vs yvoiy (196 D 9) cf. Erast. 134 A.

196 E Fearlessness .... not bravery: Cf. Prot. 349 E, 351 A, Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1 1 15 a 16. Cf. Cic. Be offic. I. 16; Tusc. IV. 22, “Neque enim est ilia
fortitudo quae rationis est expers”; Be fin. V. 14. Cf. Prot. 350, where Gom-
perz thinks it a foolish distinction. Cf. von Arnim, p. 28. Cf. also on Phaedo
68 D.

197 B ff. Sophistry: Laches, like Anytus {Meno 91 C) and Callicles
{Gorg. 520 A 1), scorns the Sophists.

197 D Refinements: KOfixl/eveaOaL. Cf. Rep. 436 D. Cf. Critias’ distinction
in Charm . 163 B-E.

197 D Prodicus: Prodicus is for the simple-minded Laches merely a type
of Sophist. The passage cannot be used to justify Alfred Benn’s statement
that “Plato .... for reasons unknown particularly hated Prodicus. ” Cf.
Prot. 314 C, 315 D; Euthyd. 277 E, 305 C; Theaet. 151 B; Cratyl. 384 B;
Phaedr. 167 B; Symp. 177 B; Meno 96 D; Apol. 19 E; Rep. 600 C; Charm.
163 D; Prot. 337 A, 339 E, 358 A and D; Meno 75 E. Cf. Class. Phil., XXI
(1926), 95.

197 E Consider for yourself: a vtos .... <jk6tt€l. Cf. Gorg. 505 C; Phileb ;
12 A, avros yvoury. Cf. supra , 187 C 2; Phileb. 20 A; Prot. 316 B 6, 360 D 8.
Eurip. Ion 1357; Hel. 1257; Elect. 639; Aesch. Sept. 650; Apelt, Aufsdtze , p. 88.

198 D Present and future is one: Hence the Platonic ideas are out of space
and time. The definition must apply always and everywhere. Cf. on Rep.
33 9 A (Loeb).

199 A Prophet: Cf. supra on 195 DE. Cf. Polit. 290 C (subordinate to
general); cf. Tim. 71 E.

200 A His opponent shares it: Cf. Charm. 166 C; Gorg. 457 C.

LYSIS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, Platos Jugenddialoge , etc ., pp. 37-71. Cf. Shorey’s review,

Phil., X (1915), 334-35*

- , Rhein. Mus ., LXXI (1916), 364-87.

Croiset, A., Platon: (Euvres completes , Vol. II. Paris, 1922.

Friedlander, II, 91-104.

Goldbacher, Zur Erklarung und Kritik des Platon. Dialoges “Lysis,” “Ana¬
lecta Graecensia,” pp. 125-40. Graz, 1893.

Grote, II, 172-94.

Mutschmann, “Zur Datierung des Platon. Lysis” Wochenschr.f. klass. Phil.,
XXXV (1918), 428-31.

Pohlenz, pp. 365-94 (with Symposium), “Gott. gel. Anz.” (1916), pp. 252 ff.,
and “Nachr. d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Gott. Philolog.-hist. Klasse” (1917),
pp. 560-88.

Raeder, pp. 153-58
Ritter, I, 497-504.

Shorey, P., “The Alleged Fallacy in Plato Lysis 220 E,” Class . Phil., XXV

(i93°)> 38o~83-
Taylor, pp. 64-74.

Wilamowitz, I, 187-91; II, 68-75.

NOTES

203 A Panope: Cf. Hesychius, s.v. ILavo\f/; Strabo IX. 397, 400; W. Ju-
deich, Topographie von Athen, pp. 49, 415. (Muller's Handbuch [Miinchen,
i93!]> HI, 1,1.)

203 AB Straight for the Lyceum: Cf. Eurip. Hippol. 1197, ttjp evOvs "A p-
yovs. On the Lyceum cf. Frazer, Pausanias, II, 195, 197.

204 A Conversations: Cf. Cham. 153 A; Theaet. 172 D; Symp. 177 D, ev
\6yois LKavij hiaTpiftf).

204 B Eighteenth-century poetry: Cf. Cowley, “And sometimes Mary was
the fair, /And sometimes Anne the crown did wear”; Pope, Epist. II. 20,
“The Cynthia of this minute”; Starkie on Aristoph. Wasps 99.

204 B A blush: Cf. Prot. 312 A; infra , 213 D; Charm. 158 C. Cf. Thrasy-
machus blushing, Rep. 350 D; Euthyd. 275 D; Demetr. De elec. c. 218; Pater,
Plato and Platonism, pp. 118-19.

204 BC Expert in love: Cf. Symp. 177 D, 212 B; Phaedr. 257 A; Symp.
198 D; Theag. 128 B; Phaedr. 227 C. Cf. Xen. Mem. II. 6. 28; Xen. Symp.
VIII 2. Cf. Friedlander, I, 55. Cf. also on Charm. 154 B.

204 C The na?ne of Lysis: Cf. the lover in Horace Odes I. 27. 10; Martial
I. 71 ; Theoc. XIV. 18.

487

488

WHAT PLATO SAID

204 D In the boy's honor : Cf. Aeschines Tim. 145-46.

205 AB Hear the verses: Cf. Ion 530 D; Prot. 347 B; Gorg. 447 C, 449 C;
Hipp. Maj. 286 C; Euthyph. 6 C.

205 B The ideas : (777s diavoLas). Cf. Ar. Poet. 1450 a 10, 1450 b 12,
1456 a 34. Cf. on Ion 530 BC.

205 C Pindaric ode: Pindar is not mentioned explicitly but that is the
meaning. Plato really sympathizes with Pindar, but is sufficiently a man of
the world to reproduce the tone of up-to-date “anti-Victorian” criticism.

206 C Fond of listening: </>i,\i?Koos. Cf. on Rep. 475 D (Loeb), also ibid.
476 B, 535 D, 548 E; Euthyd. 274 C, 304 C.

206 D Menexenns: Menexenus, after whom the dialogue of the same
name is called, was an Athenian, the son of Demophon and the cousin of
Ctesippus. From Phaedo 59 B 9 we learn that he was present at the death
of Socrates. His official name was Meve^evos Arjuop&vTos Uaiavubs.

206 E-207 A Chaplet on his head: Cf. Cephalus in Rep. 328 C.

207 A Good as fair: Cf. Archibald Marshall’s novel, Sir Harry , for a mod¬
ern English expression of the feeling, and Pater on Pindar, “Greek Studies”
(1895), The Age of Athletic Prizemen , p. 307.

207 C Xenophontic Socrates: Cf. Xen. Symp. III. 10; IV. 19.

207 C Proverbially common: KOLvaTa(j)i\wu. Cf. Rep. 424 A, 449 C; Laws
739 C; Phaedr. 279 C; Crit. 112 E; cf. Eurip. Orest. 735.

207 D Edifying discussion: Cf. the simple edifying tone of the protreptic
discourses with Kleinias in Euthyd. 278 E-282 D and 288 D-290 D. Cf. Rep.

539 B, 537“38- n .

207 Ef. Limits his freedom: Cf. infra, 210; Gorg. 505 B. A later Stoic
idea. Cf. Persius Sat. V. 99 ff.; Epict. II. 13. 20; IV. 1. 63; Philo, quod omnis
probus liber ; von Arnim, Stoics , III, 87, 88; Axiochus 366 D-367 A. It is a
slight anticipation of Plato’s later Carlylean and Ruskinian satire on “liber¬
ty” (Rep. 557 E, 562 E, 563).

211A Boyish: Cf. Propertius’ Hylas, “Quae modo decerpens tenero
pueriliter ungui” (I. 20. 39).

211 CD Feast of reason: Cf. on Rep. 352 B (Loeb); Rep. 354 AB; Gorg.
447 A; Phaedr. 227 B; Tim. 17 A, 27 B.

21 1 D Aristophanic readiness of invention: Cf. Phaedr. 236 DE; Polit.
270 D ff.

212 B Eros: Cf. Symp. 204 C. Cf. my note in Class. Phil ., XXV (1930)
pp. 380-83. Cf. Unity , pp. 18-19, with Friedlander, II, 485. Cf. Laws 837 A
8-9, which Wilamowitz (I, 344) overlooks, with Xen. Mem. III. 9. 7. Cf.
infra on 219 D.

“/j” denoting existence: Cf. Parmen ., supra , p. 291, and on 142 B-155 E.
Cf. Soph. 256 ff.

212 B Loved in return: Cf. Anteros in Phaedr. 255 D.

212 E Misinterpretation: Cf. Prot. 339 ff.; Ale. II 147 BC; Charm. 163 B;
Grote, II, 179, 236, 284.

213 D Relieve Menexenus: Cf. Phileb. 11 C; Soph. 218 B; Euthyd.
277 D 3; Gorg. 448 A; Theaet. 183 C; Polit. 257 C; cf. also perhaps Parmen.
137 B 8.

LYSIS— NOTES 489

214 A Authors of our wisdom: Ar. Eth . 1095 b 9; Grant, Ethics of Ar. I.
83-100. Here it is ironical. Cf. Rep. 331 E (Loeb); Prot. 338 E-339 A.

214 B Nature and the whole: This, by the way, disproves the thesis that
7 repi </>6<jecos means concerning the primary substance. Cf. J. W. Beardslee’s
Chicago dissertation, The Useof^vaLs in Fifth Century Greek Literature , pp.
56 ff. Cf. Meno 81 C 9; Laws 716 C-E; Phaedo 96 A 8; Tim. 27 A 4; Phileb.
59 A 2; Eurip., frag. 902. 5.

214 B Between all like things: Cf. Gorg. 510 B; Sy?np. 195 B; Rep. 329 A
(Loeb); Heraclit. (Diels) 68, ov 81a t&v d/jLoiuv.

214 D Like himself: Cf. Rep. 352 AB; Laws 626 D, 629 D; Ep. VII.
332 E 5; Horace, “nil aequale homini fuit illi” (Sat. I. 3. 9). Cf. on Gorg.
482 BC.

214 D Only the good . . . .friends: Cf. Cic. De am. §§ 18, 65; Laws 716 C;
Ar. Eth. 1155 a 31; Diog. L. VII. 124. Cf. Seneca Ep. LXXXI. 12; Xen.
Mem. II. 6. 20; Epict. II. 22. Friedlander (II. 96) quotes Herod. III. 82
against this paradox.

214 E Doubts: Cf. on 218 C; Meno 89 CD; Theaet. 189 CD, 195 C;
Cratyl. 428 CD f.

214 E What use can like have of like: Cf. Ar. De an. 416 a 32.

215 A “Qua” good: Plato frequently employs this subtlety. Cf. Rep.
342 E, 345 C and D, 439 A; Gorg. 476 B; Prot. 351 C; Lysis 214 E, 210 C;
Soph. 248 E; Ale. I 116 A, 131 A, 115 E; cf. Ion 540 E; Parmen. 158 E.

215 A Sufficient: Cf. on Hipp. Min., init.

215 D Hesiod: Works and Days 25. The so-called odium figulinum. Pot¬
ter is jealous of potter, etc.

215 E Magnificent: Ironical word. Cf. Meno 70 B, 94 B; Symp. 199 C;
Rep. 558 B.

215 E Between opposites: Cf. Sy?np. 186 B. Cf. Tennyson, In Memori-
am , lxxix:

But he was rich where I was poor,

And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.

216 A Subtle fellow: KOfixpos, another ironical word. Cf. Rep. 376 A,
404 A, 460 A, 525 D, 558 A, 568 C, 572 C; Phaedo 105 C; Gorg. 521 E (cf.
Phaedo 101 C, KOiiipeias) . Cf. Theaet. 156 A, 17 1 A, 202 D; Phileb. 53 C 6.

216 A Masters of all wisdom: In the style of the Theaetetus (165 B and
D). TrcL(rao(f)OL is another ironical word. Cf. Euthyd. 271 C, 287 C; Prot. 31$ E;
Theaet. 152 C, 149 D, 181 B, 194 E; Rep. 598 D; Soph. 251 C. Cf. Friedlan¬
der, II, 182; Apelt, Aufsatze , p. 79. Wilamowitz (I, 302) says the word has
not yet developed its bad connotation in the Protagoras , but first in the
Lysis.

216 A 7 Eristics: Wilamowitz (II, 70) says avTiKoyiKos is not yet used
in its later bad sense. But how does it differ from Theaet. 164 C 7, 197 A 1 ?
Cf. Unity , n. 108; Calogero, Giomale critica della filosofia , November, 1928,
pp. 429 ff.

216 A Spring upon us: Another ironical turn. Cf. Theaet. 165 B-E.

490

WHAT PLATO SAID

216 B 1 Most opposite: Cf. Parmen. 148 B and on Theaet. 190 C.

216 B Who hate love: Cf. on Euthyd. 301 B. Grote (II, 180) misses the
point.

216 C Is dazed: (€1X17710;) Cf. Theaet. 175 D; Gorg. 486 AB; Cratyl.
41 1 B; Phaedo 79 C; Gorg . 527 A; Prot. 339 E; Rep. 407 C; Laws 892 E;
Ep. VII. 325 E.

216 C Neither-good-nor-had: Symp. 180 E; Euthyd. 280 E, 292 B; Prot.
351 D; Gorg. 467 E; Symp. 202 AB; Charm. 161 AB.

217 D Alters the nature of the thing: It has, I think, not been observed
that this is one of many minor Platonic passages that stuck in Aristotle’s
memory. Cf. Met. 1097 b 17 1022 a 17; De an. 418 a 30, Top. 134 a 22 ff.

218 A Already possess it: Cf. Symp. 204 A; Phaedr. 278 D; and perhaps
Euthyd. 276 AB.

218 AB Bad ignorance: Cf. Symp. 204 A; Soph. 229-30; Apol. 21 D 5-7,
29 B; Laws 732 A, 863 C; Ale. I 117 f.; Meno 84 BC; Laws 886 B; Phileb.
48 E ff. Cf. also on Charm. 171 DE and Euthyd. 276 A.

218 BC The problem is solved: Observe the readiness with which inter¬
locutors accept what Socrates suggests and then are dashed by his discovery
of new objections. Cf. Theaet. 157 D, 162 CD, 187 C, 189 C, 194 B, 195 B
and D, 202 D, 203 E, 205 A, 207 CD, 208 E.

218 D Braggart and cheating arguments: Cf. Phaedo 92 D. A clear “an¬
ticipation” of the misology of Phaedo 89 D. Cf. Laches 188 C.

218 D A purpose: On ov evena cf. on Laches 185 D. Cf. infra on 219 D.

219 C Ad infinitum: An infinite series is for both Plato and Aristotle a
reductio ad absurdum. Cf. Parmen. 132 B; Theaet. 200 BC; Cratyl. 422 A i;
Eryx. 404 A. Cf. Boethius III. § 10, “Ne in infinitum ratio prodeat.” Cf.
Friedlander, II, 76. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1094 a 20; Met. 994 a 7, 1006 a 8,
1008 a 22, 1012 a 13, 1026 b 23, 1074 a 30, etc. Cf. Poems of Henry More , p.
60, “Thus we’ll play / Till we have forc’d you to infinity, / And make your
cheeks wax red at your philosophy.” Cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philo-
sophicuSy p. 23.

219 D Final object of love: Cf. Laws 837 A. Cf. on 212 B. Cf. Ar. Met.
1072 a 29.

219 D Deceptive wraiths: etScoXa. Cf. Boethius Cons. Phil. 3.3.13; 3.8.1.
Some interpreters, e.g., Grote, II, 182-83, assume that if Plato seems to

overlook a distinction which he himself has made it is because he has forgot¬
ten it. Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil ., XXV (1930), 380-83.

220 B Substitute good: Cf. Sy?np. 205 E on reXos.

220 E No longer be loved: Cf. Pillsbury, Psychology of Relativity , p. 266:
“Were one to take a militaristic view of the world, it would be possible to
argue that it is hate of the opposition that furnishes all the real incentives of
life, that if war and hating were to stop all progress would stop.”

221 C Effect must fail: Cf. the mediaeval “cessante causa cessat et effec-
tus” and John Stuart Mill, Logic (9th ed.), I, 395, and Aristotle, Ross, Ar .,
p. 72, “Actual and individual causes are simultaneous in origin and cessa¬
tion with their effects; potential causes are not.” Cf. the discussion in

LYSIS— NOTES

49 1

T. Welton, A Manual of Loric , II, 'I'X , and P. Coffey, The Science of Lo?ic , II.
80-81. Cf. Ar. An. Post. 98 a 36 ff.

221 D Of what we lack: Cf. Phileh. 35 D; Symp. 192 E 10, 200, 201 ; and
Shelley, “It desires what it hath not, the beautiful.” Cf. Spinoza, Ethica , ed.
van Vloten and Land (1 895), Part III, prop. 9, scholium, “Constat itaque ex
his omnibus, nihil nos conari, velle, appetere, neque cupere, quia id bonum
esse judicamus; sed contra, nos propterea aliquid bonum esse judicare, quia
id conamur, volumus, appetimus, atque cupimus.”

221 E Akin to us: Cf. Symp. 205 E 6; Charm. 163 D; Emerson's “dear
and connate” and his “he may have his own”; and Burroughs’ “For lo, my
own shall come to me.”

Cf. my note on oiKeiov in Class. Phil., XXIV (1929), 410. Friedlander (II.
10 1 ) quotes Herod. III. 81. For the word ohieiov cf. also Phaedo 75 E; Rep. 443
D, 376 B, 586 E, 590 D; Polit. 307 D 2; Gorg. 506 E.

It became a part of the terminology of the Stoics.

221 D Love him in return: Cf. Dante’s “Amor che a nul amato amar per-
dona.”

222 C Moving in a circle: neOvo/jiev. Cf. elXiyytw supra on 216 C

PROTAGORAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, J. and A. M., Platonis “ Protagoras .” Cambridge, 1893.
von Arnim, H., pp. 1-37 (with the Laches ).

Croiset, A., and Bodin, L., Platon : CEuvres completes , III, Part I. Paris,
1923.

Friedlander, II, 1-36.

Gercke, A., “Fine Niederlage des Sokrates,” Neue Jahrb ., XLI (1918),
1 45“9

Grote, II, 259-316.

Natorp, pp. 10-18.

Pestalozzi, H., Zur Auffassung v. PI. “Protagoras.” Zurich Diss., 1913.
Pohlenz, pp. 77-112.

Raeder, pp. 106-11.

Ritter, I, 309-42.

Shorey, P., “Note on d>s eyw/scu. and Plato Protag. 336 D,” Class. Phil ., XV
(1920), 200-201.

Stewart, J. A., The Myths of Plato, pp. 212-58.

Taylor, pp. 235-62.

Wilamowitz, I, 139-53.

NOTES

Than the “ Phacdrus ” or the “Republic” : The Protagoras is placed here not
because I believe it is really an early or minor dialogue, but because it is one
of the best examples of Plato’s dramatic art in the portrayal of scenes from
Athenian life.

309 Narrated: Perhaps at a palaestra.

309 Anonymous comrade: His presence is recognized in 339 E, irpos ae.
Friedlander (II, 1) thinks there was a group.

310 A Hippocrates: Cf. Kirchner, Prosop. Attica , No. 7630.

Socrates: He is apparently unmarried, rather young, and has some kind
of servant to open the door.

310 C Runaway slave: The dramatic date might be inferred to be during
the Peloponnesian War. Cf. Ar. Clouds 6-7. (Nestle [p. 52] says it is before
the Peloponnesian War.)

31 1 A Callias: Cf. Cratyl. 391 C; Apol. 20 A; Theaet. 165 A; Eryx. 395 A;
Phileb. 19 B; Kirchner, op. cit.y No. 7826. Cf. Apelt, p. 123. For kcltcl\v6i
(31 1 A 1) cf. Tim. 20 C; Parmen. 127 B; infra, 315 D; Theaet. 142 C 1.

31 1 B Tests: From the use of ci7ro7retpcd/zei'os here is derived the designa¬
tion peirastic in the classification of the dialogues; cf. p. 61-62.

312 A As a Sophist: I.e., as a “professor.” There is no inconsistency with
the Euthydanus. Cf. 310 D. For the Sophists cf. supra , pp. 12-16.

492

PROTAGORAS— NOTES

493

312 B A cultural . . . . education : There is no contradiction with 318 E
Cf. Erast. 135 D. Cf. perhaps Phileb. 55 D.

313 B His parents* money: Frequent gibe against Sophists. Cf. on Hipp .
Maj. 282 CD; Nestle, Protagoras Einleitung , p. 9.

313 C Traveling salesman: Cf. Tim. 19 E, the Sophist a vendor. Cf. also
Soph. 224 CD; Rep. 371 D 7.

313 D Praises his own wares: Cf. Laws 917 C, where merchants are not
allowed to praise them on oath.

313 E Physician of the soul: Cf. Theaet. 167 A; Soph. 230 C 5; Charm.
157 A; Gorg. 514 DE, 515 B. Cf. Aesch. Prom. 380, \l/vxys voaovaris daiv larpoi
\6jol, quoted by Plut. Consol, ad Apol. 2 = 102 B. The idea is a common¬
place in Seneca and Plutarch; Plut. In virtute sentiat prof edits §11, 81 F;
Quomodo adulator § 20, 61 D ff. Cf. also Isoc. De pace 39; Gorg. Encomium
Hel. 14; Cic. Tusc. III. 14 and HI. 39; Epict. III. 23. 30; II. 12. 19 ff.:
II. 13. 12 ff.; II. 14. 21; frag. 19. i; von Arnim, Stoic, frag. III. 120. 19;
Boethius I. § 4; Matt. 9:12; cf. Ficino, apud Della Torre, “Salutarem ani-
morum exercui medicinam quando post librorum omnium Platonis interpre-
tationem mox decern atque octo de animorum immortalitate libros et aeterna
felicitate composui”; Spenser, FQ, VI. 6. 5, “Give salve to every sore, but
counsel to the mind”; Milton, Samson Agonistes , 435.

314 C Lingered in the vestibule: Cf. on Symp. 174 D. Socrates always
wishes to finish the discussion. Cf. Gorg. 505 D; Phileb. 66 D; Tim. 69 AB;
Laws 752 A.

314 D Satirized: The literary motive and the parodies of Homer are sup¬
posed to have been borrowed from the play of Eupolis entitled KoXaKes which
won the first prize in 421, defeating Aristophanes’ Peace. The scene of the
play was Callias’ house and the whole piece was a satire on a number of Soph¬
ists, including Protagoras and Socrates, who were assembled at the rich
Sophist’s house. Cf. Nestle, p. 50.

316 D Invidious: Cf. perhaps on Laches 184 C.

316 D Herodicus: Herodicus, a native of Megara and later established
at Selymbria, was a boy-trainer and a physician and the teacher of Hippoc¬
rates (cf. Suidas, s.v. Hippocrates). He was the first to insist on the impor¬
tance of exercise and diet, especially recommending long walks (cf. Phaedr.
227 A). Cf. Adam on Rep. 406 A; Gossen in Pauly-Wiss., VIII, 978-79* Cf.
Plutarch on Damon (Per. 4). Cf. Thompson on Phaedr. 227 D; Rep. 406 A.
Another Herodicus, a brother of Gorgias, is mentioned in Gorg. 448 B.

317 A Multitude never perceive anything: This is contrary to the fancy
that Protagoras was the first theorist of democracy.

317 C Never suffered any harm: Possibly an allusion to his persecution
later. Nestle, adloc . and Introd., p. 13.

317 C Socrates suspects: Cf. supra , p. 64.

317 DE Greek eagerness to hear: For delight in discussion, cf. infray
335 D; Gorg. 458 D; Symp. 218 BC; Phaedr. 242 AB, 245 BC, 249 CD; Lysis
213 D \ Phileb. 15 E; Eumaeus in Od. XV. 392. Cf. also on Rep. 539 C 6. Isoc.
Antid. 31 1 is not quite the same idea.

494

WHAT PLATO SAID

318 A Bettered by his instruction: Grote (II, 266) quotes Seneca Ep. 108.

318 DE Glance at Hippias: Cf. supra , p. 64.

318 DE Studies of the schoolroom: Cf., however, Derenne, p. 48, on Pro¬
tagoras’ study of astronomy.

319 A His “profession”: Cf. on Euthyd. 273 E 5. Eu/fouMa is essentially
what Isocrates professed to teach.

319 E Impart it to their sons: Cf. Meno 93 D ff., 100 A, and on 99 B.

319 B ff. Consult prof essionals: Cf. Troland, The Mystery of Mind, p. 11.
Cf. on Gorg. 455 DE.

319 D Pop up and advise it: An Aristophanic touch. Cf. Aristoph. Birds
490; Rep. 561 D 3, avcLTTjbcov. Cf. [Xen.] Rep. Ath. I. 6. Aristotle {Pol.
1281 a 42, 1286 a 30-31) anticipates the modern idea (cf. Lowell’s Democracy)
that the collective judgment of the multitude may be more sound than that
of any individual.

320 A 2 Like freed cattle: Cf. Rep. 498 C; Laws 635 a 4; Crit. 119 D lit¬
erally.

The distinctions brought out in the “Republic” : Cf. supra , pp. 68, 70-2, 159.

320 C Myth or an apologue: pvdos and \6yos. Cf. Gorg. 523 A. Cf. on
Phaedo 61 B 4.

320 D Four elements: Literally, “fire and earth and the things that are
mixed with fire and earth.” Cf. Tim. 42 E. The passage is often misinterpret¬
ed. Cf. my review of Stewart’s Myths of Plato in Jour. Philos ., etc. Ill (1906),
498, and my review of the Loeb translation in Class. Phil., XXII (1927), 230.
The four elements are so familiar that when two are named the faintest allu¬
sion supplies the others. Cf. Shakes. Sonnet 45, “The other two, slight air
and purging fire”; Antony and Cleopatra , V, 2, “I am fire and air, my other
elements I give to baser life.” Cf. Ar. De caelo III. 1. 298 a 30; 3. 302 a 29;
nrvp Kai yrjv kcll ra avcrroixa tovtols, Met. 998 a 30. Cf. Phileb. 29 A 10.

321 B For survival: For this anticipation of the logic of evolution cf. Tim.
34 C, 37 E, 45 D, 70 C, 73 C, 76 DE; Ar. Depart, an. 663 a; Cic. De nat. deor.
II. 47-48. Cf. Lucret. II. 709, IV. 835, V. 844 and 857-58 with IV. 686. Cf.
also on Phileb. 31 D ff.

321 B Gave fecundity: Cf. Herod. III. 108. This is what Thomson {Out¬
line of Science , p. 217) calls “the spawning solution of the problem of securing
the continuance of the race.” Cf. Minucius Felix, Halm , p. 22 (XVII. 10),
for the means of protection of the animals.

321 B Phrasing of Lucretius: Derer. nat. V. 222. Cf. Anaxag., frag. 21 b
Diels I3, 409; Nestle ad loc ., Epict. Diss. I. 16. 1. Cf. Carlyle, History of
Mediaeval Political Theory in the IFest, p. 11 ; Anacreontea , ed. Rose, No. 24.
Cf. Pliny Hist, nat . 7. Proem.

322 A Man .... divine: This is an apparent contradiction of the first
words of Protagoras’ treatise about the gods, and also of the views of the
Protagoras of the Theaetetus. Cf. Theaet. 162 DE. We know little of Protag¬
oras except what Plato tells us. Cf. supra , pp. 13—15, and the dissertation of
Wilhelm Halbfass, “Die Berichte des Platon und Aristoteles iiber Protagoras,”
Jahrb.f. klass. Phil. (13. Suppl., pp. 151 ff. See esp. p. 209.)

PROTAGORAS— NOTES

495

322 A Only animal that believes in gods : Cf. Tim. 42 A; Laws 902 B; Me-
nex. 237 D. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 4. 13. Democritus said animals had an idea of
God (Diels1, p. 383). Of. also Cic. De leg. I. 8.25; Pliny aptid Cudworth,
True Intel. System of the Universe , III, 467; George Herbert:

Of all the creatures both in sea and land
Onely to man thou hast made known thy wayes.

322 A Constructed altars: Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam , “Built him fanes
of fruitless prayer.” On the whole topic of culture myths on the origin of
civilization cf. my paper on Plato , Lucretius , and Epicurus in “Harvard
Studies,” XII, 208-9. Cf. George Norlin, “Ethnology and the Golden Age,”
Integrity in Education , pp. 49-68; Eduard Norden, Jahrb.f. klass.Phil. (19.
Suppl., 1893); E. E. Sikes, The Anthropology of the Greeks (London, 1 91 4) ;
Wilhelm Nestle, “Kritias: Eine Studie,” Neue Jahrb. XI (1903), pp. 81-107,
1 78- 99; Otto Apelt, Progr. von Eisenach (Ostern, 1921); Anthropology and the
Classics , ed. R. R. Marett (Oxford, 1908)

322 B Warfare against the animals: Cf. Isoc. Panath. 163; Porphyry Vita
Pythag. (Teubner) 52; Laws, 681 A

322 C Awe or reverence: For the “scientific” expression of it, cf. Cole,
Psychology , p. 34, “It is certain also that youthful criminals .... have not
been so trained as to develop the cortical inhibitions which are necessary to
decent citizenship today.”

322 C Indispensable precondition of civilized life: Cf. Jacks, The Alchemy
of Thought , p. 345. Cf. also Isoc. Antid. 255 and Nic. 7; Anon. Iambi., frag. 6
(Diels).

323 B Affirm that he is honest, even if he is not: Cf. Gorg. 461 BC, 482 D;
La Bruyere (Morley, p. 99, Studies in Lit.): “The man who quite coolly and
with no idea that he is offending modesty says that he is kind-hearted, con¬
stant, faithful, sincere, fair, grateful, would not dare to say that he is quick
and clever, that he has fine teeth and a delicate skin.”

323 D The small: Cf. Ar. Nic. Eth. IV. 7. 1123 b 7.

324 AB All punishment rests on the same belief: Grote (II, 270) finds a
contradiction here with the Gorgias. Cf. Mill, III, 378.

The doctrine of the Protagoras on punishment is substantially that found
in other Platonic dialogues. Cf. Friedlander, I, 203. Cf. on the purpose of
punishment, Gorg. 476-80, esp. 472 E-473 E, 504 E-505 C; Rep. 591 AB,
380 AB; Soph. 228E-229A; Polit. 293 D, 308E-309A; Laws 854 DE,
934 AB; on the exemplary punishment of the incurable, Rep. 410 A, 615 C ff.;
Gorg. 525 C ff.; Phaedo 113 E; Laws 728 C, 731 D, 735 DE, 854 E, 855 A,
942 A, 862 E, 957E-958A; on punishment in the world to come, Phaedo
63 D, 107 DE, 113-14; Phaedr. 248E-249A; Theaet. 177 A; Rep. 330 DE,
363 DE, 615 A ff.; Laws 870 DE, 872 E, 881 A, 959 BC. The idea that the
worst punishment is to grow like the evil occurs in Theaet. 176 D-177 A and
the Laws, 728 BC, 904 C ff., and the Laws also enjoins that the sins of the
fathers shall not be visited on the children (855 A, 856 CD).

Wrong has been done: Cf. Sen. De ira , I. xix: “Nam ut Plato ait nemo
prudens punit quia peccatum est, sed ne peccetur.”

WHAT PLATO SAID

496

324-25. No noticeable advantage over others: This is in a sense the still
debated question of inheritance versus environment.

326 A The school: C f. Isoc. Areopagit. 37.

326 A and D Stories of great and good men: Cf. Carnegie’s words: “It is
a tower of strength for a boy to have a hero.” Cf. Trevelyan, Clio a Muse ,
p. 23 and passim.

326 BC Servant of the mind: Cf. Rep. 498 B 6, 410 C. Cf. Xen. Mem. II.
1.28; Econ. XVII. 7; Isoc. XV. 180. Cf. Milton, Apology for Smectymnus:
“Preserving the body’s health and hardiness to render lightsome, clear, and
not lumpish obedience to the mind.”

326 CD The laws of the city continue this instruction: Cf. Laws 81 1 C,
588 CD, 957 CD.

326 D As teachers trace lines for the letters: The teacher traces lines on
which and between which the letters must be written. Cf. Nestle ad loc. and
Theaet. 172 E.

326 E Rule and be ruled: Cf. Laws 942 C, 643 E, 762 E, Xen. Mem. II.

I. 6 and passim.

326 E Rectified or straightened: Cf. 325 D; Ar. Eth. 1 109 b 7.

327 B Interested in others' virtue: Cf. on Gorg. 492 A 8. Cf. Mill, Nature ,
p. 53. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics , p. 426.

327 A Flute-playing were indispensable: Cf. Huxley, “A Liberal Educa¬
tion,” Science and Education , p. 80: “Suppose it were perfectly certain that
the life and fortunes of everyone of us would, one day or other, depend upon

his winning or losing a game at chess . Do you not think we should look

with disapprobation .... upon the father who allowed his son, or the state
which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a
knight?”

327 DE Pampered child: Cf. on Laches 179 D 1. For the whole passage
cf. Bagehot, Physics and Politics ( Works , IV, 444), on the conservatism of
Plato and Aristotle who held with Xenophon that man is the hardest of all
animals to govern. “We,” he says, “reckon as the basis of our culture upon
an amount of order; of tacit obedience .... which these philosophers hoped
to get.”

327 D Pherecrates .... last year s play: The "Aypioi 421-20. Cf. Ath. V.
218 D; Nestle, Protag ., pp. 52, no. Apelt (p. 127) says that there are many
anachronisms in the Protagoras.

327 D Benedict Arnolds: Literally Eurybatus and Phrynondas, prover¬
bial traitors and rascals. Cf. Aristoph. Thesm. 861.

327 E Teachers of speaking Greek: Dialex. VI. n-12; Diels, II3, 343. Cf.
Ale. 1 1 1 1 A; Grote, II, 5.

328 A Pick up from their fathers: Cf. on Rep. 467 A (Loeb); Dialex. VI.

II, Diels, II3, 343-

328 B He reinforces this general teaching: Cf. Isocrates’ ideal of educa¬
tion {Pan ath. 30-33). Cf. also Theaet. 167; Isoc. XV. 193 ff.

328 C Of Plato and not of “ Protagoras Cf. the charge of plagiarism
that the Republic is wholly in Protagoras (Diog. L. III. 37-38). Cf. also the

PROTAGORAS— NOTES

497

sensible observations of Friedlander (I, 203-4) and his refutation of die ar¬
guments of Dickermann and others. Cf. also Philostratus Vita Soph. I. 10.

Protagoras' treatise: Diels ( Vorsokr ., II3, 231) thinks it may be only a name
for the myth in Plato. Zeller suggests it may refer not to the origin of civiliza¬
tion but to the establishment of officials in office. Cf. also Norden, Agnostos
Theos , pp. 370 ff.; H. Gomperz, Sophistik und Rhetorik , p. 129, who thinks the
style is Platonic.

Of Plato himself: Gomperz illustrates ( Greek Thinkers , II, 144 ff. and III,
286) by a passage from Dio Chrysostomus’ sixth oration (Teubner text,
I, in). But if we concede, what is doubtful, that there is more Cynic than
Platonic coloring in the Dio passage, there is still not the slightest evidence
that it goes back to Protagoras himself. The Cynic writer could have taken
Prot. 320 E ff. for his text. The words €7ret 5e eXeyov rives with which the
Cynic development attributed to Diogenes begins may well refer to Plato.
Zeller’s attempt (Archiv /. Gesch. d. Philos ., V [1892], 17 5 ff.) to show that
Aristotle (687 a 23) (part. an. IV. 10) had the original treatise of Protagoras
before him breaks down. He deals in the vaguest generalities and cites, and
could cite, nothing definite that Aristotle could not easily have inferred from
Plato or added of his own.

Fairness of Plato's mind: Cf. Unity , p. 68. Cf. also Gorg. 483-84; Phileh.
37 B; Theaet. 166-68.

Of “later” dialogues: Cf. the parallels adduced by Friedlander, I, 205, and
the others, especially from the Laws in my paper on Plato , Lucretius , and
Epicurus , “Harvard Studies,’’ XII, 208-9.

Modern thoughts: Cf. also Nestle, Protag. , p. 46.

Well-meaning citizens: Cf. Rep. 492-93; supra, pp. 1 3~~ 1 6 .

A few traits of satire are never in Plato incompatible with a prevail¬
ing serious thought, and the inconsistencies and absurdities discovered by
Gomperz are too uncritical to need refutation. This does not mean that
Protagoras claims (like Count Keyserling!) to catch the tone of the social
tradition of any political community he may visit. Still less can it be used to
reconcile the Protagoras of this dialogue with the paradoxical Protagoras of
Theaet. 166 A-168 C.

329 D They are parts of virtue: Cf. Laches 190 C, 198 A; Laws 696 B,
633 A, 963; cf. 626 and 709 E ff. and Pater, Marius the Epicurean , p. 24. Cf.
Isoc. Peace 32. Cf. Unity, p. 52, n. 380.

330 CD This thing justice is just: Socrates, like a cross-examining lawyer,
wins assent to an obvious truism in order to prepare the way for the next
step in 331 A. The use of “thing” may or may not (it need not) imply an
anticipation of the theory of ideas. Trpdypa is often a colorless supergeneral
word. Cf. Polit. 263 B 8; Theaet. 168 Bi; Euthyd. 274 E, 307 B 8; Rep.
608 C 9; Phaedr. 235 B 3, 234 E 4. Cf. Diels II3, 345; Dialex. 9.

330 E That the parts of virtue are distinct: Aristotle probably coined the
word 6p.oiop.eprj from this passage to describe Anaxagoras’ theory of matter
and for use in his own biology: De caelo III. 3* 3°^ a 31 > 3°^ ^ *3» A atur.
ausc. III. 4. 203 a 21; I. 4. 187 a 25; De gener. et coir. I. 1. 314 a 19; Met. I. 3.

498

WHAT PLATO SAID

984 a 14; Be gencr. anim . I. 18. 723 a 7; Be plant . I. 3. 818 a 17; Be gener.
anim . I. 18. 722 b 32; II. 5. 741 b 13; Be part, anim . II. 2. 647 b 10-17;
II. 1. 646 b 11, 31; Be hist. anim. I. 1. 486 a 14; 487 a 1-10; 4. 489 a 25. It
also corresponds to the res fungibiles of Roman law.

331 A Is not the thing holiness a just thing? Adam says it is the fallacy of
contradictory and contrary. The fallacy, if it is one, is explained in Symp.
202 A. Is it really a fallacy or mere rhetorical exaggeration? Cf. Raeder. p.
81; Nestle, p. 1 1 6.

331 CD A concession made in this spirit: Cf. Rep. I. 346 A (Loeb) and
349 A; Go7g. 495 A; Me 710 83 D.

331 E Which is fully explaiiied in the “Philebus” : 12 DE ff.; Thompson
on Meno 74 D. Cf. Ar. Be an. 414 b 20, where the Meno is not named.

332 C One thing can have only one opposite: Cf. Ale. II 139 B; Ar. Met.
io55 a x9> 995 b 27> an(l passim .; Be caelo 269 a 10; Apelt, Protag ., p. 129.

332 E Folly is the opposite of both aaxbpoavvrj and wisdom: Cf. Eurip. Med.
884—85, aQxbpoi'eiv .... a<£pcuy. Ar. Top. 106 a 10 ff proves a thing has two
meanings by proving it has two opposites. It is, strictly speaking, ooxfrpoovvrj
that has two meanings (cf. Laws 710 A). But it makes no difference, and this
precision would unnecessarily complicate the argument. Xen. Mem. III. 9. 4
must be cited, but does not affect our interpretation, ao(j>Lav 8e /cat ac o^poovvrjv
ov 8iwpi£cv.

It was Plato .... who introduced to biacov: Cf. Shorey note, Class. Phil.y
XXV, 80; Simplicius on to 81 ttov. Cf. Friedlander, II, 184. Cf. also Phileb.
56 D; Theaet. 198 D 2; Soph. 261 E 6.

333 CD Anothei' 77ieaning of the verb aoj^povelv: Cf. on Chartn. 159 B.

334 A On the relativity of good: Cf. Diels, II3, 334 ff. Dialex. 1. Sextus

(Diels II3 223) says of Protagoras eioayei to irpos tl, but that refers to Theaet.
l53 *57 AB ff., 160 B. There is a similar development in Xen. Mem. III.

8. 6 and IV. 6. 8. Cf. Heraclit., frag. 61 (Diels). Cf. Leslie Stephen, Science
of Ethics , p. 78, and the chapter on “The Mores Can Make Anything Right”
in Sumner’s Folkways ; Spinoza, III, 39, schol.; H. Gomperz, p. 162; Sextus,
p. 14; Pyrrhon. I. 53 ff.; Ross, Ar ., p. 190, “Yet he cannot bring himself to
say that its use is merely equivocal.” Aristotle does say it (Top. I. 13. 11
[p. 79l)-

336 B Speech-inaking: drjp.rjyope'iv. Cf. Rep. I.350E (Loeb), on Gorg.
482 C.

335 A Contest oj wits: Cf. 333 E; J. A. K. Thompson, Greek and Bar¬
barian, s, p. 1 18. Cf. Ar. Top., passim. Cf. Friedlander, I, 1 8 1 ; Theaet. 167 DE.
Cf. the attitude of Critias in the Charm. 162 C ff. Cf. Isoc. Panath. 229.

335 A Allow his adversaries to prescribe his method: Cf. Cic. Tusc. V. 6,
“Etsi iniquum est praescribere mihi te quemadmodum a me disputari velis.”
Cf. Dem. Be cor. 2; Aeschin. III. 202.

356 B f. In both long and short speeches: Cf. supra , 329 B; Gorg. 449 B,
462 AB; and elsewhere in Plato.

336 D Not Socrates: For Alcibiades’ guaranty of that (eyyv&pai) cf. Eu-
thyd. 274 B 2. On Socrates’ memory cf. on Ion 539 E.

PROTAGORAS— NOTES

499

337 A To be impartial: Cf. Isoc. Peace n, kolvovs.

337 C Hippias : Cf. also his speeches in Hipp. Maj. 304 A, 301 B , 282 A.

337 D By nature and not by convention: Stier (“Nomos Basileus,” Phil.,
LXXXIII, 245) says Plato was quoting a real saying of Hippias, since the
words are not really relevant to the argument. Cf. on Rep. 359 C (Loeb).
Cf. Shorey, Timaeus , I, 405, n. 4.

337 D Consciousness of kind: He anticipates the thought, but not quite
the phrase, of Giddings.

337 D Prytaneium of Hellenic culture: Cf. Apol. 29 D 8; Herod. I. 60;
Thucyd. II.41.1; II. 38; II. 64. 3; Isoc. VIII. 52; Xen. Hel. II. 3. 24, and
the familiar “Athens the eye of Greece.”

338 A Logic-chopping dialectic: Cf. Hipp. Maj. 301 B, 304 A; Hipp.
Min. 369 B; Gorg. 497 C 1.

338 CD Agreed that Protagoras may ask: Cf. infra , 347 B, 351 E, 353 B;
Gorg. 462 A; Ale. 1 114 B; Minos 315 E 2. Cf. Eurip. Orest. 1576; Friedlander,
II, 1 8 1 .

338 E Interpret the poets: Cf. the Sophists in Isoc. Panath. 18. Cf. ibid.
33-

339 f. This interesting digression: For the “interpretation” of other po¬
etic passages, cf., e.g., Lysis 212 E; Rep. I. 331 D-336 A; Gorg. 484; Ale. II
147 CD; Meno 77 B.

To reconstruct Simonides 1 poem: Cf. Wilamowitz, Sappho und Swionides ,
pp. 159 ff.; H. Jurenka, “Des Simonides Siegeslied auf Skopas in Platons
Protagoras ,” Zeitsch.f. osterr. Gymn ., LVII (1906), 865-75; J. Aars, Das Ge-
dicht des Simonides in Platons “ Protagoras ” (Christiania, 1888); F. Schwenk,
Das Simonideische Gedicht in Platons “ Protagoras ” und die Versuche dasselbe
zu reconstruiren (Graz, 1889).

347 E Whose meanings will always be wrested to suit the purpose of the
quoter: Cf. Hooker apud Arnold, Literatur and Dogma , p. 302, “Even such as
are the readiest to cite for one thing live hundred sentences of Scripture,
what warrant have they that any one of them doth mean the thing for which
it is alleged?”

349 D Of the virtues: For the cardinal virtues cf. on Laws 631 CD; Rep.
427 E (Loeb). For the mention of piety here cf. supra Euthyphro in fine, pp.
79-8°.

At greater length in the “ Laches ”: Laches 194 D fi*. All attempts to prove
the relative maturity of the treatment of bravery in the Laches , Protagoras ,
and Republic are uncritical. They disregard the special purpose and press
variations in expression.

Justice also is a form of knowledge: It has been fancifully maintained that
the first book of the Republic , the so-called Thrasymachus , is the missing minor
dialogue on justice. Cf. supra , pp. 214-15.

352 C Dominates passion and appetite: Cf. Theaet. 176 C; Laws 689; Ar.
Eth. Nic. 1145 b 23; and the Stoic rjyeiiovLKov.

353 A Explain to them the state of mind: Cf. Ion 532 B, 533 C; Theaet.
187 D 3-4; Tim . 63 A; Laws 861 CD\Phileb. 37 B; infra , 357 C 7-9; Euthyph .

500 WHAT PLATO SAID

14 C. Cf. Ar. Met. 1062 b 20; Grote, IV, 365; Laws 861 CD on voluntary
crimes.

353 A Know the right and yet the wrong pursue: “ Video meliora .” Cf. Eu-
rip., frag. 221 ; Hippol. 380. Ribot (. Psychology , I, 52) thinks we have solved
the video meliora problem because we have rejected the primacy of intellect.

355 DE In compensation for a greater evil: The difficulties that commen¬
tators have found in this passage are “knots in a bulrush.” For the phrasing
cf. Ar. Rhet. 1361 a in fine. And cf. the lady who said: “I think I’ll enjoy
the coffee more than I’ll lose my sleep.” This argument is put in the mouth
of a supposed objector, rts. Cf. supra , 31 1 B, and on Hipp. Maj. 28 6 E.

357 A Greatest good of the greatest number: A phrase which Bentham took
over from Priestley or Hutcheson.

Reader of the “ Phaedo ” and “Gorgias” : On hedonism cf. Phaedo 69; Gorg.
491 ff., 494 ff., 495 B ff. Cf. Phileb. 60 A, Good and pleasure are two names
for one thing. Cf. Marius the Epicurean , p. 1 14. Cf. Ferber, “Der Lustbegriff
in Platons Gesttzcnf Neuejahrb., 1913, p. 340. Plato says not “das Angeneh-
me ist gut” but “das Gute ist angenehm”; Apelt, p. 140, Not pleasure is good,
but the good is pleasurable, a distinction already made by Sir James Mackin¬
tosh. Cf. Grote, II, 295. Pohlenz on Wil., Platon (Gott. Gel. Anz. 183, p. 8),
strangely says that the Hedonismus is certainly not Socratic but Platonic.

Protest in the “Phaedo”: Phaedo 69 A.

Elsewhere: Here by anticipation I quote in illustration of Plato’s real feel¬
ing: Hazlitt: “Harden the feelings, debase the imagination and you strike
at the root of all morality, etc.”; James, Psychology , II, 553: “Our acts cannot
be conceived as effects of represented pleasure, etc.”; Matthew Arnold: “Utili¬
tarianism! Surely a pedant invented the word, but, etc.”; Cic. De offic. III.
28; Wordsworth: “Give all thou canst / High heaven rejects the lore / Of
nicely calculated less and more”; George Eliot: “Nature never makes men
who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating.” The
point of these quotations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, is that a
thinker may recognize the portion of truth in utilitarian hedonism and yet
reject it as a philosophy and still more as a language. Seneca sums it up in a
sentence ( Ep . LXVII. 16): “Ego tarn honestae rei ac severae numquam
molle nomen imponam.”

361 AB Argument laughs: For the personification of the argument or
Xoyos, cf. also Phaedo 76 E, 88 E, 89 B and C; Theaet. 200 C, 203 D; Rep.
503 AB, 538 D; Laws 870 B; Polit. 277 C, 284 B; Gorg. 475 D; Phileb. 53 E;
and many other cases.

Already said: Supra , pp. 71-73.

354 C-355 A The unqualified formula that pleasure is the good: With “pur¬
sue” pleasure, “flee” pain, cf. Tim. 69 D; Laws 875 BC. Cf. Gorg. 507 B 7.

355 A Nothing else to offer when challenged: Cf. Phileb. 21 C ff., 55 A.

Wish the theory to be taken quite seriously: Though he always reluctantly

recognized the element of truth in it. Cf. on Rep. 457 B (Loeb). Cf. Laws
732 E-733 E, 662-63.

361 E Future distinction for Socrates: Socrates is young. Cf. supray 3 14 B,
where he says, We are too young to settle such a question.

GORGIAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Croiset, A., and Bodin, L., Platon: CEuvres completes , III, Part II. Paris,
19 23.

Cron-Deuschle-Nestle, Platons ausgewahlte Schrif ten, Te\\ II. Leipzig und
Berlin, 1909. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil ., IV (1909), 461.

Dorfler, “Die Orphik in Platons Gorgias ,” JVien. Stud ., XXXIII (1911),
177-21 2.

Friedlander, II, 246-75.

Geffcken, J., “Studien zu Platons Gorgias” Hermes, LXV (1930), i4“37*
Gomperz, Th., II, 326-57.

Grote, II, 317-76.

Humbert, Jean, Polycrates: V accusation dc Socrate et le liGorgias. Paris,
1930. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil., XXVI (1931), 224-25.

Menzel, A., Kallikles. Wien und Leipzig, 1922.

Natorp, pp. 42-52.

POHLENZ, pp. 129-67.

Raeder, pp. 1 11-25.

Ritter, I, 391-449.

Stewart, J. A., The Myths of Plato , pp. 114-32. Cf. Shorey in Jour. Phil.,
Psy. and Sci. Meth. 3. 495-98.

Taylor, pp. 103-29.

Thompson, W. H., The “Gorgias” of Plato. London, 1871.

Wilamowitz, I, 209-38.

NOTES

Interest in mathematics: Cf. 45 1 C and on 508 A; Meno 82 B ff., 86 E ff.;
Euthyph. 12 D; Theaet. 147 D ff., 165; Rep. 522-29, 546 B ff. (the nuptial
number); Tim. 31 C, 35 B, 53 C ff; Laws 744 BC, 747 BC, 819 A-C, 820 A,
822, 895 E. The more technical study of Plato’s knowledge of mathematics
and the relation of mathematical ideas to his metaphysics is reserved. Mean¬
while cf. Unity, pp. 83 ff.; Class. Phil., V (1910), 115; XXII (1927), 213-18;
XXIV (1929), 312-13. .

447 B The hurt himself has made: 6 rpuva s /cat taaerat was the oracle given
toTelephus when wounded by the spear of Achilles. Plato is probably allud¬
ing to Euripides’ Telephus. Cf. schol. Ar. Nub. 919; Eurip. III. 188 (Nauck).
Cf. Milton, “For to warn me against moroseness there is the example of Tele¬
phus King of Mysia, who did not refuse to be cured later by the very weapon
which wounded him”; Lucian Nigrinus, §38- Cf. Propert. II. 1.63, Qua
cuspide volnus / Senserat hac ipsa cuspide sensit opem ; Fairfax, Tasso, IV,
92, “Achilles’ lance that wounds and heals again.”

447 B Repeat the performance: €7rtSet£ts, from which comes epideictic ora-

501

5°2

WHAT PLATO SAID

tory, is the designation of any such exhibition of talent. Cf. Euthyd. 275 A;
Cratyl . 384 B; Laches 1 83 D i-^;Hipp. Min. 363 D, 364 B \Hipp. Maj. 282 B.
Cf. T. C. Burgess, Epideictic Literature (diss., Chicago, 1902).

448 C By experiment derived: Possibly a quotation from his book. Cf.
Ar. Met. 981 a 4.

448 E Answer the question: That is, in legal parlance, “responsively/’ Cf.
461 E; Charm. 166 D; Laches 192 C; Prot. 336 A, 338 D; Phileb. 28 B;
Crito 49 A; Ale. I 106 B; Xen. Mem. IV. 2. 23.

450 B Kvpcxuns: The scholion of Olympiodorus says that critics objected
to this word and x^PWPlW0- which are not found in the authors, but that
they are local words of Leontini, which Gorgias uses as Cebes in Phaedo
62 A says lttoj Zeds.

450 D 6 Logistic: Arithmetic is the science of numbers; logistic is reckon¬
ing.

451 E Drinking song: Cf. Loeb Lyra Graeca , III, 564. For the relation
of health to ordinary and to absolute goods cf. Rep. 591 C 7 (Loeb).

452 A-E At some good: Cf. Shorey, “Idea of Good,” p. 209; commentators
on Ar. Eth. 1094 a 1.

453 A Artisan of persuasion: Cf. Sext. Empir. 674. 25 (Adv. Math. II. 2);
Volkmann, Rhet. d. Griechen u. Rd?n.i pp. 4 ff.; Mutschmann, Hermes , LIII
(1918), 440-43.

For the antagonism toward rhetoric cf. Sext. Empir. 680. 15 ff. {Adv. math.
II. 26 ff.) All students of rhetoric studied the Gorgias. Crassus read it at Ath¬
ens (Cic. De or. I. n); Quintilian examines it (II. 15. 24). Cf. in Saintsbury’s
History of Criticism , II, 82, Castelvetro’s notes on the Gorgias as Plato’s
rhetoric.

455 A Terminations of “-ive” imperfectly reproduce: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic.
1104 b 33; Cratyl. 388 C; Aristoph. Knights 1378 ff.:

His style is so coercive and conclusive,

So cogitative, elusive and delusive,

And finely apprehensive of the applausive.

455 E Themistocles .... and Pericles: Cf. Prot. 319 B. The long walls
were built between 461 and 456 b.c. on the motion of Pericles. Originally
only two were erected, one running from Athens to Peiraeus and called the
“north wall,” another from Athens to Phalerum. About 445 Pericles pre¬
vailed upon the people to build a third one running parallel with the wall to
Peiraeus and called the “south wall.” All three were demolished at the end
of the Peloponnesian War, but in 393 b.c. the north and south walls were
rebuilt through Conon and remained standing till Hellenistic times. Cf. W.
Judeich, Topographie von Athen (1931), pp. 1 55 ff. The fortification of the
Peiraeus was effected primarily through the efforts of Themistocles. Cf. Thu-
cyd. I. 93.

456 A If you only knew: For the complacent el ye cf. Tim. 21 C; Hipp.
Maj. 282 D; Eurip. Phoenissae 1347.

456 B Nowhere: Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 2. 52-53. For similar colloquialisms
cf. Phaedo 72 C; Charm. 176 A.

GORGIAS— NOTES

5°3

456 C Before a crowd: Cf. Eurip. Hippol. 989; Cic. Be or. II. 7.

457 C No more to be blamed for its misuse: Cf. Isoc. Antid . 252; Nic. 4;
Anon. lamblichi , frag. 3; Diels, II3, 331.

458 A Than to free another: It is uncritical to cavil on Plato’s occasional
shifts from the ideal to the plane of “common sense.” They never affect the
main argument. Cf. Gorg. 481 B, misunderstood by Gomperz, III, 50, and
480 E with Gomperz, II, 332. Cf. Phileb. 49 D, and on Rep. 451 A (Loeb).
Cf. the lady who said, “When I found that my jewels were dragging me
down to hell, I gave them all to my sister.” For the idea that it is better to
confute one’s own errors than those of strangers, cf. Democr., frag. 60 (Diels,

n3, 75, 15).

461 C Which is just what you love: Cf. Rep. I. 336 C, 337 A, 338 D; in¬
fra, 482 E ff. For complaints of Socrates cf. on Meno 80 A.

461 C Hayseed: Literally, it is much rusticity, ay poLida.

The love of power: For this ethical nihilism cf. infra , Rep. 358-67; “Interp.
of Tim.,”AJP , IX, 403-4; infra on Tim., p. 345-46; Loeb, Rep. on 358 C and
Introd., pp. x-xi; Unity , p. 25; “Idea of Good,” pp. 215 ff.; Menzel, op. cit .;
Zeitschr.f. offentliches Recht (1922-23), pp. i-84;Stier, NOMO^ BA^IAEU^,
Phil., LXXXIII, 225-58; W. Eckstein, Das antike Nat urr echt, etc. (Wien und
Leipzig, 1926); Nestle, “Die Entwicklung der griechischen Aufklarung bis
auf Sokrates,” Neue Jahrb.f. Paedagogik (1899); “Politik und Aufklarung,
etc.,” Neue Jahrb.f. d. klass. Alt. XXIII. (1909); Diels, in Internationale
Monatsschrift, October, 1916, on the fragment of Antiphon in Oxyr. 1 1 ; Shorey
on “The Ethics and Psychology of Thucydides,” TAP A, XXIV, 66-88. Cf.
supra, pp. 6, 55.

461 C Young people: It is fanciful to date the dialogues by such expres¬
sions. Cf. Phaedr. 275 B; Soph. 232 E; Laws 886 D, and the notion that Plato
couldn’t have written the Republic after or before fifty [Rep. 540 A).

462 BC It is no art: The Laws (938 A) waives the question whether rhet¬
oric is an art or a knack. The Phaedrus argues that dialectic might make it
an art (263 B). There is no contradiction. Cf. 504 D 5-6, 462 E-463 A. For
starting with art cf. on Soph. 219 A.

463 A Latent parody of Isocrates: Isoc. XIII. 17 ,^pvxvs avdpiKrjs xai Sofcur-
tlktjs; Plato, ^vxvs fit oroxcurri/ajs Kal avSpeia s. Cf. Raeder, p. 124, n. 3. Cf.
Phileb. 55 E 7 for the word. Wilamowitz (II, 108 ff.) overlooks the point.
Cf. Pohlenz, p. 135, “Dass dieser Ausdruck auf Gorgias selbst zuriickgeht,
ist sehr wahrscheinlich; darin kann ich Suss Ethos 24 ff. durchaus zustim-
men.” But cf. contra, Shorey, Class. Phil., VI, no; Unity, p. 77, n. 596.
Norlin (note on Isoc. Against the Sophists 17 [Loeb]) says, “Unmistakably
this phrase is parodied in Plato Gorg. 463 A.”

463 D Followed by an explanation: (ra^earepov. Cf. 500 D; Rep. 412 E,
413 B, 429 C, 467 D 12; Polit. 297 C; Laws 664 E. Cf. on Rep. 338 D (Loeb);
Rep. 523 C; Theaet. 166 DE; Pliaedo 100 A; Laches 189E-190A; Lysis
217 CD, 218 DE; Laws 626 DE, 668 D, 691 B, 835 D; Phileb. 17 A, 23 E;
Euthyph. 10 A; Polit. 306 C; and many other cases.

463 E Colt: A pun on the name of Polus. Cf. on Rep. 580 B (Loeb) for
other puns on proper names.

WHAT PLATO SAID

504

464-65 Four real and Jour pseudo-arts: Cf. Isoc. Antid. 180 f. for a dif¬
ferent classification suggested by this, TraiboTpifiiKT]v for the body and cfriXoao-
(f)iav for the mind. Cf. Antid. 210.

464 BC Imitated by cookery: Cf. Theaet. 175 E 5-6. Emerson, Repr. Men:
“His illustrations are poetry and his jests illustrations. Socrates* profession
of obstetric art is good philosophy” (cf. on Theaet. 149-50) “and his finding
the word ‘cookery* and adulatory art for rhetoric in the Gorgias does us a sub¬
stantial service still.’*

464 C “Understudied?' : For virodvaa cf. Ar. Rhet. 1356 a 27, virodvercu.

465 C Confound rhetoricians and sophists: So do philologists today. Cf.
my review of H. Gomperz, Sophistik und Rhetorik , in Class. Phil., VIII (1913),
239, and of Suss, Ethos , in ibid ., VI (1911), 109.

Cicero points out: Cic. Acad. II. 44, “Sunt enim Socratica pleraque mira-
bilia Stoicorum.”

Boethius: Cons. Phil., passim, and IV. 2, the good have power, the evil are
weak, the wicked cannot do what they desire, but only quod libeat. Cf. Gorg.
507 C; ibid. § 4, it is a misfortune to have power to do evil; those who are
punished are happier, those who do wrong more unhappy than those who
suffer; punishment is taking the sick to the physician, etc.

466 D, 467 B What seems good to them: On this distinction cf. Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1 1 13 a 17; Rep. 577 E i; Laws 688 B 7.

469 B Better to suffer wrong than to do wrong: Cf. Democr., frag. 45; Ar.
Eth. Nic. 1134 a 13.

469 E Burn the Athenian arsenal: Cf. Aristoph. Acharn. 919 ff. Cf. also
Seneca Ep. I. 4, “Quisquis vitam suam contempsit tuae dominus est.”

470 A A good? Cf. Epict. IV. 1. 118-19.

471 Archelaus: Cf. Ale. II 141 D; Theag. 124 D. Archelaus, the illegiti¬
mate son of Perdiccas II, ascended the Macedonian throne in 413 after killing
his uncle, his cousin, and his half-brother (Athen. 217 d; Ael. Var. hist. 12, 43).
As a ruler he effected many internal improvements and developed an excel¬
lent army (Thuc. ii. 100). He was a patron of literature and art. Many fa¬
mous poets and artists flocked to his court, such as Euripides, Agathon,
Choerilus, Timotheus (the cithara-player), and others, and his palace was
decorated with paintings by Zeuxis.

471 E Substituting witnesses . . . . for argument: Cf. 475 E; Hipp. Maj .
288 A; Cratyl . 437 D, a majority is no proof; Laches 184 E; Epict. II. 12. 5;
II. 26. 6.

472 AB Street of Tripods: Cf. Frazer, Pausanias, II, 209. For the Pythi-
on in Athens cf. ibid., p. 189.

473 D Bugaboo: Cf. Phaedo 77 E; Crito 46 C; Epict. II. 1 . 1 5, poppoXvKeia.

474 A Inability to put to the vote: Some interpreters miss the obvious irony
of the Socratic non possumus. Cf. on Phaedo 63 E. For the incident cf. on
Apol. 32 B.

476 CD ff. Good and honorable to be punished: The “fallacy” is used in
support of what Plato believes to be a profound moral truth, that it is better
even for the victim to be punished than to live on in sin. Cf. Laws 854 DE,

GORGIAS— NOTES

5°5

862 E, 934 AB. Laws 860, which Gomperz, II, 346 overlooks, and 728 to¬
gether with Rep. 437 E 7-9 (Loeb) show that Plato understood the fallacy
which is a “topic” in Ar. Rhet. 1397 a and is explained by Ar. Top. 106 b 33.
Cf. Eth. Nic. 1 136 a 24.

480 BC, E-481 A Impunity for your enemies: Cf. on 458 A. Gomperz (II,
332 and III, 50) argues from this that the Gorgias is earlier than the Crito
because Plato is still far removed from the principle of love toward enemies.
Cf. Class. Phil., I (1906), 297. But cf. the reservation, el apa del tl va /amos
iroieiv. Plato never forgets. Cf. on Euthyph. 7 D and Hipp. Min. 376 B.
Grote (II, 329) says Gorg. 480 C and 508 B could have been used to justify
Euthyphro’s indicting his own father.

A real person: There is no evidence and opinions are divided. Cf. Pohlenz,
p. 142. Apelt (pp. 106-7) argues that he is Alcibiades.

481 C Topsy-turvy world: Cf. Boethius IV. 4; Montaigne, II, 12, “Si ce
rayon de la divinite nous touchoit aulcunement ... nos actions ... auroient
quelque chose de miraculeux comme nostre croyance.”

481 C Without community of experience: Cf. Goethe, “Fremdes konnen
wir nur verstehen wenn wir Analoges in uns and unserem Volke verstehen.”
Themistius on Ar. De an. III. 5 uses the idea to prove the unity of the “ac¬
tive intellect” in all men. Modern psychologists think it worth while to re¬
peat this. Cf. Binet, Lame et le corps , p. 147. Cf. Adler, Understanding Hu¬
man Nature , p. 60. Cf. Cole, Factors of Human Psychology , p. 23; Titchener,
Studies in Psychology , p. 17. The phrase lolov .... ttclOos f) ol aXXoi suggests
Theaet. 166 C, but the connection is different.

481 DE Demos the son of Pyrilampes: Cf. Lysias XIX. 25. Cf. infra ,
513 B. Cf. Aristoph. Wasps 98; Hesychius, s.v. He was ridiculed by Eupolis,
frag. 213 (Kock, I, 317) for his silliness, and was known throughout Greece
for his peacocks (Eupolis, frag. 214 [Kock, I, 317]).

482 AB Always says the same things: Cf. infra , 490 E, 527 DE; Tim.
40 A; Symp. 221 E 5; Laws 719 D; Isoc. Peace 52; Xen. Mem. IV. 4. 6;
Minos 315 A 5; Epin. 982 C 7; Thucyd. I. 22 and III. 56. Cf. H. Gomperz,
“Isokrates und die Sokratik,” Wien. Stud., XXVII (1905), 181.

482 BC At variance with himself: For the general idea of harmony, agree¬
ment, friendship, unity, consistency with one's self, cf. on Laches 188 D;
Laws 689 A; Rep. 621 C; Laws 859 CD; Rep. 416 C; Cratyl. 433 B 4; Lysis
214 D; Rep. 351 E; Laws 626 D; Ep. VII. 332 E; Novotny, Plat. Epist .,
pp. 183-84. Cf. the anecdote of the popular lecturer, “You probably didn’t
agree with me.” “Oh, as much as you did with yourself.”

482 C Talking to the gallery: dTjfxrjyopeiv. Cf. 494 D, 519 D 6; Prot. 336 B;
and on Rep. 350 E (Loeb); Theaet. 162 D; and infra , 513 A ff.

483 A Favorite trick: tovto .... to aofyov, Symp. 175 C 8; cf. Euthyd .
293 D. Cf. Rep. 336 C 4, eyvwK&s tovto.

483 C Oveireach the many: Cf. 490 E, irXeove^la. Cf. Rep. 349 B and E
(Loeb); Rep. 359 C; Laws 875 B, 906 C, 677 B; Symp. 188 B, 182 D; Democr.,
frag. 224. Cf. Inge, Christian Ethics, p. 262.

483 D Dealings of entire states: Cf. Dryden, Satire on the Dutch., 1. 22,

WHAT PLATO SAID

5°6

“States (i.e. republics) are atheists in their very frame’*; Hobbes, Leviathan ,
XVII, “And as small families did then; so now do cities and kingdoms, etc.”;
Inge, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems , pp. 341-42.

484 B Flashes: e£e\a/z7T€. Cf. Rep. 435 A; Ep. VII. 344 B.

484 B The poet Pindar: Cf. Laws 690 BC, 715 A, 890 A. The question
whether Pindar really could have meant this or whether Plato intentionally
or carelessly misquoted him will be examined elsewhere. Cf. Stier, “Nomos
Basileus,” Phil., LXXXIII (1928), 228; Olympiodorus on Gorg., p. 284. Cf.
Shorey on Jean Humbert, Polycrates , in Class. Phil., XXVI (1931), 225.

484 C For ingenuous youth: Cf. Rep. 487 CD. Cf. Grote, II, 230. So Per¬
icles in Xen. Mem. I. 2. 46 tells Alcibiades that he used to be keen on logic¬
chopping when he was young. Aul. Gell. X. 22 says the idea, study philosophy
only in youth, is Plato’s own opinion. Cf. Isoc. XV. 282-87 and XII. 29-32,
and Ennius apud Cic. Tusc. II. 1. i; Aul. Gel. V. 16, Tac. Agric. c. 4 (Grote,
II, 365L Emerson, Repr. Men: “He has good-naturedly furnished the cour¬
tier and statesman with all that can be said against the schools, etc.”

484 E In Euripides' phrase: Eurip. Antiope , frag. 182 N. Cf. Ar. Rhet.
1 37 1 b* P°r the idea cf. Emile Faguet, “On a toujours l’opinion de son tal¬
ent.”

485 D Whispering in a comer: ev ywvLq.. Cf. Lysis 206 E, ev ywv'ia
rjpria^ov. Cf. Epict. I. 29, 36, 55; II. 12, 17; II. 13, 26; III. 22, 98; Cicero
De orat. I. 13, 57 in angulis; De rep. I. 1, 2; Acts 26:26; Euseb. Hist. eccl.
X. 4.

485 E-486 A In Euripides addresses to his brother: Cf. Eurip. Antiope ,
frag. 183 ff. N; Cic. De or. II. 37. The scholiast says that Plato’s art teaches
us that in quoting poetry we must not quote long speeches without inter¬
polating little bits of prose.

486 C Pardon the rudeness: Not only boasting (cf. on Apol. 32 D), but
any form of brutal or harsh speech, was rudeness and rusticity to Athenian
feeling. Cf. Rep. 361 E, 613 E; Phaedr . 260 D; Euthyd. 284 E; Phaedr. 269 B;
Gorg. 462 E; Erast. 136 E.

487 B He is friendly, for his advice - ; Cf. Isoc. Panath. 54. Cf. Isoc.

I. 44 for the idea that a well-disposed counselor is rare. Cf. Laches 178 B; Ar.
Rhet. 1378 a.

487 C Pull up in time: Like George Eliot’s Mr. Brooke in Middlemarch.
489 D Nietzsche s: Cf. Lippmann, Men of Destiny, p. 64. Cf. Rep. 358 C.
491 D Will they rule themselves ? Cf. Isoc. Antid. 290; To Nicocles 29; Xen.
Mem. I. 2. 17; Thales (Diels, II3, 216), apxwv Koapet aeavrou. Cf. Laws 626 E;
Rep. 579 CD, 580 C 2; Milton (Of Cromwell), “He first acquired the gov¬
ernment of himself, and over himself acquired the most signal victories, so
that on the first day he took the field against the external enemy he was a
veteran in arms, consummately practised in the toils and exigencies of war.”
Cf. E. A. Robinson, Tristram, p. 83, “There’s a contentious kingdom in my¬
self / For me to rule before I shall rule others”; Cole, Psychology , p. 38;
Rabelais, I, 52, Car, comment, disoit-il, pourrois-je gouverner aultruy, qui
moy-mesmes gouverner ne sgaurois?”

GORGIAS— NOTES 507

491 D Affects not to understand: The puzzling idea of self-control. Cf. on
Rep. 431 A (Loeb); Laws 627; and on Charm. 159 B.

491 D Nothing profound: ovSe v ttoiklXov. Cf. Meno 75 E; Cratyl . 393 D;
Phileb. 53 E; Tun . 59 C; Xen. Mem. II. 3. 10. Cf. ov8e v kollvov , Phaedo 100 B;
Rep. 399 E; and ov8ev KaivoTepov, Phaedo 115 B. Cf. Laws 795 B, ovbev pey a;
Xen. Mem. III. 5. 14, ovhlv .... a7r oKpv(f>ov.

491 E Contemptuous reply (cos rjdvs el): Cf. Rep. 337 D, 527 D, 348 C,
ridiare; Hipp. Maj. 288 B, cos yXvKvs el.

492 C Window-dressings piffle , and moonshine: Cf. Eurip. Cyclops 317.
492 A Power to provide their satisfaction: Cf. Charles Mitchell, president

of the National City Bank (quoted): “We enjoy the greatest degree of pros¬
perity and reach the highest standard of living when the greatest volume
of things are being produced and consumed.” Cf. 494 B 2. Cf. Lange, His¬
tory of Materialisms III, 239, who treats this view as a symptom of the
ethical materialism of our age. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in
France: “Philosophical happiness is to want little. Civil or vulgar happiness
is to want much and to enjoy much.” Cf. Leslie Stephen’s Hobbes, EML,
p. 135: “For as to have no desire is to be dead, so to have weak passions is
dullness.”

492 A 8 Praise justice: Cf. on Prot. 327 B; Rep. 360 D; supray 483 B; Ar.
Rhet. II. 23.

493 A The tomb of the soul: a&pa err} pa. Cf. Cratyl. 400 BC \Co?nplete Poems
of Henry Mores p. 120: “These last be but the soul’s live sepulchres.” Cf.
St. Francis on “Brother body, the cell of the soul.” Cf. Shakes., King Johns
III, 4: “A grave unto a soul.” Cf. Young, Night ThoughtSs HI, 458: “Death
but entombs the body; life the soul.”

493 B-E Sieve of the Danaids: Cf. Xen. Econ. VII. 40. Cf. Lucret. III.
1009, V. 20; Axioch.371 E. The names of the fifty daughters of Danaus are
given by Apollod. Biblioth. II. 1. 5 Hygin. Fab. 170; cf. Pindar Nan. X. 7;
Ovid. Met. IV. 462; Heroid. XIV; Shorey on Horace Carm. III. 11. 22, etc.
Cf. Waser in Pauly-Wiss., IV, 2087 ff.

493 D From the same school: Cf. Ter. Hec. 203, “in eodem omnes mihi
videntur ludo doctae ad malitiam.”

493 CD Spend its days in perpetually refilling: Cf. Xen. Symp. IV. 37
and Jesus to the woman of Samaria (John 4:13-14). Cf. Democ., frag. 219,
the greater the appetite, the greater the lack. Cf. also frags. 223 and 235.
Cf. Phileb. 54 E (No iridos). Cf. Phaedo 84 A for the same idea expressed by
a different figure. Cf. infra, 507 E.

Ninth book of the “ Republic': Cf. 494 A 1 with Rep. 574 A 3, and in gen¬
eral cf. ibid. 583 B ff. with Phileb .

494 D An itch: Cf. Phileb. 51 CD; Shakes., Tempest , II, 2, 58, “Yet a
tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch”; Democ., frag. 127 (Diels,
IP, 85); Xen. Mem. I. 2. 30-31G).

494 E The fault is Callicles: Cf. Cratyl. 418 A 2; Dem. De cor.y 4, 9, 126;
Xen. Sy?)ip. VI. 7.

508

WHAT PLATO SAID

494 E Distinction between pleasures: C f. Rep. 561 C; Phileb. 13 B ff.;
Laws 733; Prot. 353 D ff.

495 E ff. Be or cease to be: There is no contradiction with Phaedo 60 B
and Phileb. 36 B 8, as the scholiast, Hermann, p. 319, already says.

498 Again: The apparent sophism is directed against the literal identi¬
fication of pleasure and the good, and is to be interpreted by the statement
in Phileb . 55 B 5 that this thesis compels its proponent to affirm that a man
is bad when he suffers pain and good when he feels pleasure.

503 BC Miltiades and Pericles: Cf. Aristeides, vt ep twv reTTapoiv, ed. Din-
dorf., II, 156 ff.

503 E Realizing a type or ideal: For the a kotos, cf. Polit. 308 C; Class.
Phil., IX, 366.

504 CD Such an order: For the generalization cf. Symp. 186 BC, 187 E;
Unity , n. 500.

504 D Soberness and righteousness: aaxfrpoavvri and diKaioauvr]. These two
are frequently bracketed in Plato. Cf. Phaedo 82 B i; Prot. 323 A i; Erast.
138 AB; Ale. I (Apelt, p. 227); Prot. 325 A 1; also in lists with other virtues,
Prot. 329 C 4; Laches 199 D 7; Meno 78 D; Prot. 330 B 5, 349 B 1; Laches
198 A 8; Phaedo 114 E-115 A; Laws 965 D 2; Symp. 196 BC.

504 E The true and scientific rhetor: This may be taken as an anticipation
of the Phaedrus. Taken literally, it is as much a contradiction of the denial
that rhetoric is an art {supra, on 462 BC) as the Phaedrus is ( Phaedr . 263 B).
Cf. on Laws 938 A.

505 D Leave the myth without a head: Cf. Phaedr. 264 C; Phileb. 66 D;
Laws 752 A; Tim. 69 B, where Taylor thinks the capital of a column the origi¬
nal meaning. For the idea without the image cf. Polit. 277 C.

508 A Geometrical equality: Cf. Rep. 558 C; Laws 757 A-D, 848 B, and
on 744 BC. It is fanciful to find in this bit of rhetoric a proof of Plato’s recent
interest in mathematics, or the charge that Callicles is ignorant of elementary
geometry, and that he therefore represents Isocrates who sneers at the mathe¬
matical studies of Plato’s school.

508 AB With the challenge to refute: For this point of method cf. supra ,
467 AB; Theaet. 166 C; Rep. 610 AB, 437 A ff.; Soph. 259 A; Polit. 284.

509 A Proved by a logic of iron and adamant: He apologizes for this dog¬
matism by aypoiKorepov, which is misunderstood by Wilamowitz who refers
it to the image. Cf. scholiast, p. 323; Theaet. 151 B 4; Phaedo 87 A. Cf. on
486 C and on Apol. 32 D. Cf. Shakes., Much Ado, IV, 1:

Confirmed, confirmed, O, that is stronger made
Which was before barr’d up with ribs of iron.

510 D Fawn upon his power: Cf. Isoc. 1. 36; II. 16; IX. 46; XV. 71; Ar.
Knights , passim.

511 A By his imitation of evil men: Cf. supra, 510 BC; Laws 728 B qoc-

Theaet. 176 E-177 A. ^

51 1 DE The navigator does not plume himself: Grote, missing the humor,
actually argues that this is not true.

512 C As his social inferior: For the phrasing cf. Lysias X. 23.

GORGIAS— NOTES 509

512 E Neither love nor hate his life: Cf. Seneca Ep. 24. 24, “Et ne nimis
amemus vitam et ne nimis oderimus.” Cf. Milton, PLy XI, 549-50:

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest
Live well, how long or short permit to Heav’n.

Cf. Cic. De Jin. II. 14, Martial X. 47. 8.

512 E The women say: Cf. Cic. Nat. deor. I. 20, “Tamquam aniculis, et
iis quidem indoctis, fato fieri videantur omnia.”

513 A Thessalian witches: This is literature, not superstition.

514 E 7 and 515 B 4 Public physician of the soul: Cf. supra , 4 56 B, and
Apol. 32 A 3. For “physician of the soul” cf. on Prot. 313 E.

515 E Boles from the treasury: Cf. Norlin on Isoc. Areopagit. 24 (Loeb).
Cf. Ar. Pol. 1274 a 8.

515 E Spartanomaniacs: Lit. “with broken ears” (like pugilists). Cf.
Prot. 342 B; Aristoph. Birds 1281 (with Blaydes’ note); Stallbaum ad loc.

516 A They impeached him: Pericles was brought to trial in the second
year of the Peloponnesian War when public discontent was at its height as
the result of the widespread suffering occasioned by the war and was fined a
sum of money the amount of which varies between 15, 50 (Plut. Per. 35), and
80 (Diod. 12, 45) talents. Thucydides (II. 65) says that he was fined a sum
of money, but he adds that the Athenians repented afterward and returned
the money. The charge of embezzlement is mentioned only by Plato. The
historians know nothing of it.

516 DE They ostracized Cimon: Cf. Burke, Vindication of Natural Society:
“This was the city which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced
into exile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a
city which changed the form of its government with the moon, eternal con¬
spiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A republic, as an
ancient philosopher has observed, is no one species of government, but a
magazine of every species.” Cf. Rep. 557 D.

516 AB Caretaker of horses and cattle: Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 2. 32. A bad
herdsman makes cattle fewer and worse— so a bad ruler of people (Xen.
Econ. III. 11).

516 B Man is an animal: Cf. Theaet. 174 D; Laws 766 A, 808 D, a child
is the most unmanageable of animals; Polit. 265 D, 266 A.

518 B The Sicilian cookbook: This passage is often quoted. The title of
the book is not known. In A then. XII. 516 C, Mithaecus is referred to as
one of the ol ra '0\papTVTiKa avvOevre s. Cf. Rep. 404 D; Hor. Carm. III. 1,
18, “Siculae dapes.”

518 CD No fault to find with the elder statesmen: Cf. Isoc. Peace 75 on
Aristides, Themistocles, and Miltiades; Peace 126 on Pericles. Cf. Antid. 234,
306-8.

520 A Complain of unjust treatment: Dean Inge uses this to prove all gov¬
ernments bad.

521 B To put the worst name upon it: Mwroy .... Ka\eiv was proverbial.
Cf. Muow eaxarosy Leutsch-Schneidewin, II, 25, 80; Mvauv \eiay ibid ., pp. 38,

WHAT PLATO SAID

5iq

538, 762. Cf. Euthyph . 14 E 8 for the feeling. Cf. Eurip., frag. 703 N; Ar.
Rhet. 1372 b; Dem. Be cor. § 72.

521 D Pursues the true science oj politics: Cf. Euthyph. 2 CD. Cf. Milton
of reform in England: ‘‘They teach not that to govern well is to train up a
nation in true wisdom and virtue.” Pohlenz (p. 159) thinks this inconsistent
with Plato’s farewell to politics in the Gorgias.

522 D Lack of the resources of the rhetoric: Cf. Apol. 38 D 3; cf. Cic. Be or.

I. 54, “Cum ille damnatus est nullam aliam ob causam, nisi propter dicendi
inscitiam.” Cf. the different phrasing of Xen. Apol. 9.

523 D Bade Prometheus conceal: Aeschyl. Prom. 250; Shelley, Prome¬
theus, II, 4:

.... waked the legioned hopes

That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of death.

523 E Naked of their bodies: Cf. Omar Khayyam, XLIV.

523 E-524 A Judge the dead: Cf. Burnet on Apol. 41 A 3. Cf. Gilder-
sleeve, Apol. of Justin Martyr , 1,8.

524 CD Keep the stigmata: Cf. on Phaedo 81 C. Cf. Epict. II. 18. 11.

525 E Most of the incurables are princes: Cf. Spenser, F. Q, I. 5.51: “But
most of all which in that dungeon lay / Fell from high Princes’ courts or ladyes’
bowers.” Cf. Rabelais, II, 30, which, however, imitates Lucian. Cf. Rep.
615 D 7.

525 BC Sojourn in Tartarus: Cf. Phaedo 114 A; Virgil Aen. VI. 742 ff.

525 BC Except through suffering: Cf. Arnold, Literature and Bogma , p.
187; Inge, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems , p. 46, “The idea that the
character is made perfect through suffering was not strange to Plato and ap¬
pears in the later books of the Old Testament.”

Believing this tale: Cf. Phaedo 114 C 7-9; Rep. in fine; Ep. VII. 335 A 3;
and Juvenal, “Sed tu vera puta” (Sat. II. 153).

526 E 5 Befend themselves: Cf. on Euthyd. 273 C; Laws 959 B 6; Epictetus

II. 2. 8.

527 AB Old wives' tale: Cf. Theaet. 176 B 7. Cf. Sextus Empir. 631,31
(Adv. math. I. 141), ypaoXoyLas .

Able to show: This is Plato’s moral. Cf. Theaet. 177 B.

527 D When we have so prepared: Cf. Emerson, New England Refortfi-
ers: “Society gains nothing whilst a man not himself renovated attempts to
renovate things around him.” Per contra cf. Bernard Shaw, Parents and Chil¬
dren , Pref., p. lxxiii: “We must reform society before we can reform our¬
selves.”

MENO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O., “Die mathematische Stelle im Menon,” Festschrift f. Th. Gomperz
(Wien, 1902), pp. 290-97.

Croiset, A., and Bodin, L., Platon: (Euvres completes , III, Part II. Paris,
1923.

Friedlander, II, 276-93.

Gomperz, II, 367-78.

Grote, G., II, 232-58.

Hansing, O., “The Doctrine of Recollection in Plato’s Dialogues,” Monist
XXXVIII (1928), 231-62.

Hottermann, E., “Platos Polemik im Menon , Euthydemos unci Mencxenos,”
Zeitschr.f d . Gymnasialwesen , LXIII (1909), 81-102.
von Kleemann, A. R., “Platon. Untersuchungen: II, Menon,” Archiv . /.

Gesch. d. Philos ., XXI (1908), 50-75.

Natorp, pp. 29-42.

Ovink, B. J. H., Philo sophische Erkldrungen der Platonischen Dialoge “ Meno ”
und“Hippias Minor.” Amsterdam, 1931. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil.,
XXVI (1931), 444-45-
Pohlenz, pp. 167-93.

Raeder, pp. 130-37.

Ritter, I, 476-84.

Robin, L., “Sur la doctrine de la reminiscence,” Revue des et.gr., 1919, pp.
451-61.

Stallbaum-Fritzsche, Vol. VII, Sec. II, pp. 1 ff. Leipzig, 1885.

Taylor, pp. 129-45.

Wilamowitz, I, 275-86.

There is an admirable edition by E. S. Thompson, Macmillan, 1901.

NOTES

Meno , a ... . Thessalian : Cf. Xen. Anab. II. 6. 21 ff.; Thompson, xxv.
70 A Can virtue be taught: Cf. Prot. 319 AB ff., 361 A; Euthyd. 274 E;
Ar. Eth. Nic. 1099 b 9-10. Cf. Stallbaum, Proleg. ad liMenone?n ,” pp. n ff.;
Thompson, In trod, to Meno , p. xxviii; Thompson on Meno , ad loc.; Fried¬
lander, II, 8, 32-33, 183, 187; Newman, p. 397; Xen. Symp. II. 6; Xen. Mem.
III. 9. i; Isoc. II. 12 with XV. 210-14. But no art can implant virtue in de¬
praved natures (Isoc. XIII. 21 and XV. 274). Cf. also Eurip. I A 561; Suppl.
9X3*

The question is meaningless until the ethical and the intellectual virtues
are distinguished and the different senses of teaching are defined. Plato was
of course aware of this. There is nothing so nai've in the ancient literature of

WHAT PLATO SAID

512

the subject as a modern scholar’s explanation that Socrates could not prove
that virtue can be taught because he was only a seeker, but that Plato had
to prove it because he wanted to be a teacher. Plato distinguished in what
sense it could or couldn’t be taught or inculcated by drill and habit. Cf. Rep .
518 B ff., 488 B 7, and supra , p. 68.

71 C Remind, him: A possible subtlety of allusion to one of the main
themes of the dialogue. Cf. 73 C, 76 B, 81 C, 82 A, 87 D 8, 98 A 4. Cf. on
Laches 193 E.

71 E Examples : Cf. Theaet. 146 CD; Hipp. Maj. 287 E; and perhaps
Soph. 239 D. Cf. on Laches 190 E. On the virtues of slaves, women, etc., cf.
Ar. Poet. 1454 a 20; Pol. 1259 b, 1260 a. In 1260 a 20-27 he says that it
is better to enumerate the virtues than to define them so vaguely as to identify
the sophrosyne of men and women.

Other minor dialogues: Cf. on Euthyph. 6 E. But Theaetetus sees the point
sooner ( Theaet . 147 C ff.). Thrasymachus knows it (Rep. I. 338 C).

74 A 9 Through all: Cf. Theaet. 197 D 8; Soph. 240 A 4, 255 E 3, 253 C 1,
253 A 5; Laches 192 C 1 ; Laws 965 D 1 ; Ale. I 108 B 6.

73 D Predicated of all: Cf. Aristotle’s Kara ttclvtwv. Cf. infra , 76 A; cf.
Symp. 193 C 2

72 C 8 That makes them virtues: 8l 6, Prot. 360 C 5; Rep. 432 B 3-4. Cf.
“Origin of the Syllogism,” Class. Phil., XIX (1924), 7-8 ff.

73 C Identical way by which: Cf. Hipp. Maj. 295 D.

72 D 8 Everywhere: Cf. Thrasymachus in Rep. 339 A 3 (Loeb).

74 D Opposite figures: Cf. Phileb. i3A8ff.; Prot. 331 D; and perhaps
Phileb. 34 E. Cf. Ar. De an. 41 4 b 20; Met. 999 a 9.

75 B The only thing: For this type of definition cf. on Theaet. 208 C,
199-200; Charm. 166 E.

75 B Accompanies color: For the association of xP<Vara and (rxvfxaTa cf.
Cratyl. 431 C; Soph. 251 A; Phileb. 47 A, 51 B; Rep. 601 A; Laws 669 A. Cf.
Santayana, The Realm of Essence , p. 90; Mill, Anal, of Phcnom. of Human
Mind , I, 93.

75 CD I have spoken: Cf. Dr. Johnson’s retort to one who did not under¬
stand.

75 CD More dialectically: Ar. Met. 992 b 30 ff. says the terms of the defi¬
nition must be known. Crito 50 C has the idea without the word. Cf. on
Charm. 155 A, 5ia\eYe<70cu. Cf. Theaet. 167 B. Wilamowitz (1,277) saYs t^le
term appears here for the first time. So Friedlander, II, 285; Ritter (Apelt),
Phaedrus , p. 135 (Vol. II). Cf. on Laws 9 66 C; Phileb. 58 A and on 58 D.

75 CD If a contentious and eristic interlocutor: Cf. 74 B and on Hipp.
Maj. 286 E.

76 D Pseudoscientific definition: Cf. Phaedr. 266 E ff., and for the defi¬
nition itself cf. Tim. 67 C 7.

76 D Hear and perpend: avves 6 tol \eyo). Pindar, frag. 105 AB (71. 72)
ed. Christ. Cf. Phaedr. 236 D; Aristoph. Birds 938. Gomperz (I, 492) says
Meno had heard this definition from the lips of Gorgias!

76 E The mysteries: There is no superstition. Plato’s references to the

MENO— NOTES

5*3

mysteries are always literary, allegorical, and playful. Cf. Theaet. 156 A;
G°rg. 497 C; Symp . 209 E; Laws 666 B; Symp. 218 B; and many other
passages.

76 E Is better: It is not stated in terms of a pseudoscientific theory.

77 B Pleasure in fair things: Cf. Theog. 17. The unknown poet is pos¬
sibly Simonides. Cf. Thompson ad loc. and Euthyph . 12 A.

77 B Have power: Cf. Hipp. Maj. 296 A; Pindar 01. I. 104.

77-78: Delight .... in good things: All men desire the good. Cf. on
Phileb. 20 D.

78 DE The word “procure”-. Cf. Gorg. 492 B, 517 C; Ar. Rhet. 1366 A 35.
Chooses evil: Cf. Thompson, p. 101.

80 A Complains that Socrates resembles the torpedo-fish: Cf. Boswell’s John¬
son: “No sooner does he take a pen in hand than it becomes a torpedo to him
and benumbs all his faculties.” For complaints of Socrates cf. also Hipp.
Min. 369 B; Euthyph. 11 BC; Charm. 166 BC; Hipp. Maj. 301 B, 304 A;
Gorg. 489 BC, 482 C ff., 51 1 A, 497 B; Rep. 337 A, 338 D (Loeb). Cf. 340 D;
Hipparch. 228 A; Cleitophon, passim. Cf. Grote, II, 34, 73; Friedlfinder, II,
89, 73, 142, 260; Reich, Der Mimus , I, 356. Cf. Xen. Mem. IV. 4. 8-9.

80 C Likenesses of the fair are fair: For the game of comparisons at Athens
cf. Aristoph. Wasps 1308 ff.; Theaet. 169 B 5; and the collections of Josef
Martin, Symposion , pp. 10 f. Cf. Xen. Symp . VI. 9. The analogy of the etic&p
and its model is never far from Plato’s mind. Cf. Tim. 52 C.

80 D Bears a certain resemblance: For the humorous use of fyuoios or eoute
with the dative equivalent to “is” cf. infra , 97 A; Laws 933 E; Rep. 527 D,
414 C; Hipp. Maj. 300 E; Prot. 361 B; Phaedo 62 D, 86 D; Rep. 375 C,
453 D, 605 E; Apol. 31 B; Cratyl. 416 A, 437 A; Lysis 216 C; cf. Xen. Mem.
1.6. 10.

80 D Eristic and lazy argument: Meno is a rhetorician who dislikes So-
cratic dialectic. Cf. supra , 72 A, 80 B, and 80 A, where he piles up synonyms
like Hippias in Prot. 338 A; as modern psychology puts it. “The egocentric
predicament, they say, consists in the impossibility of finding anything that
is not known.” Cf. Boethius Cons. Phil. V. 3.

80 D Exercised commentators: Grote (II, 246) identifies it with the prob¬
lem of the criterion. Cf. my Diss.y pp. 15-17.

81 A f. Sudden modulation: For this characteristic of Plato’s style cf. on
Euthyph. 6 B. For the stichomythic interruption, 81 A 7, cf. Shorey in Class.
Phil.y XVIII, 353-54; Soph. 263 Eli; Phileb. 39 E; Parmen. 131 E; Polit.
277 E; Laws 860 C 9. Cf. also Rep. 456 D. Cf. Eurip. Suppl. 142-43; I.A.
517; Helena 315-16, 826; I.T. 1209, 1215; Phoenis. 410; Ion 1001-2 ff.

81 A f. He has heard: Plato evades committing himself or Socrates to the
literal truth of edifying mysticism. Cf. Phaedo 1 17 E 1 ; Phaedr. 235 C 2. Sim¬
ilarly Emerson, The Poety “A certain poet described it to me thus.” Cf. Rep.
583 B 6.

81 A Pindar: Frag. 133 (Christ). Cf. frags. 129, 130.

81 C Akin: A hint of the later doctrine of “sympathy.”

81 DE Recollection of one thing only: This is plainly mythical symbolism.

WHAT PLATO SAID

51 4

Modern science is supposed to tell us more. Cf., e.g., Troland, The Mystery
of Mind: “At birth all the cortical synapses have practically the same re¬
sistance .... the process of learning .... must consist in lowering the re¬
sistance of one or a few of the alternative outlets so that it becomes the
actually operative one.”

81 DE Brave and industrious: This is the practical moral. Cf. “Recent
Platonism,” pp. 280-81; my Diss.y p. 22, n. 1.

82 B ff. Demonstration of the 'proposition: Socrates starts with a square
(82 B), divided as in the diagram (82 C 3). CH is one foot, CD two feet, the

whole square is four. What would be the base of a square
_B twice as large? The boy replies that it would evidently
be four. He thinks he knows, but does not. Socrates
then prolongs the lines of the original figure and gets a
square obviously four times, not twice its size, which
the boy admits (83 B) has a base twice that of the first
square. What, then, is the base of the double square?
pf p Three, the boy guesses (83 E). He is made to see the
error of that by the construction of the square ORCU ,
which is obviously based on three, and as obviously contains nine of the
measuring unit squares. What is the base of the square that contains eight?

The boy gives it up; he doesn’t know (84 A). And Socrates again “improves”
the moral. The boy’s state is the more gracious now that he is puzzled and
aware of his own ignorance. Then Socrates draws from the boy a demonstra¬
tion of the truth (84D-85B). CKLM is constructed by the addition of
three similar squares to A BCD. ADIJ is constructed within CKLM. It is
obviously a square that contains four of the halves (triangles) of which the
original square contains two. It is clearly based on the line ADy which “Soph¬
ists” (cf. suprayp. 13) call the “diameter.” That suffices for Plato’s purpose,
and Socrates does not puzzle the boy by attempting to estimate the length
of the diagonal.

An immense literature has grown up about this passage. The first thing
to note is that Plato anticipates the ideas of Schopenhauer and many modern

MENO— NOTES

5i5

educators as to the preferability of a concrete intuitive method of teaching
geometry— which incidentally contradicts the recent fancy that he wished
to reduce all mathematics to logic.

Second, we may note that opponents of Plato, from the Christian Fathers
to the present day, quote the passage as an example of Plato’s aberrations.

Third, in illustration of this passage the entire literature for and against
innate ideas might be quoted, and the entire Kaspar Hauser literature from
Herod. II. 2 and Arnob. Adv. nat. II. 20 to the present day. The opponents of
innate ideas are at great pains to refute Plato’s argument. Kantians some¬
times find here and in Phaedo 74-75 an anticipation of Kant. In what, if
any, sense Plato affirms “innate ideas” will be considered elsewhere. For ava-
fjLvrj(TLs cf. also Phaedo 72 E-77 A; Phaedr. 249 C, 254 B 5-6; Phileb. 34 B in
psychological sense, which, however, in view of Polit. 277 D, compared with
Meno 81 D and 85 C, does not prove that the “later” dialogues abandon the
doctrine. Cf. also Tim. 41 E with Phaedr. 249 E. Cf. Xen. Oecon. XVIII. 9.
Cf. Boethius III. C. n, 15:

Quod si Platonis musa personal verum
Quod quisque discit immemor recordatur.

Cf. Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality; Maximus Tyr. 16.

Cf. further my Hiss., p. 17, n. 1, and Unity , pp. 43 (followed by Wilamo-
witz, II, 173), 44, 32, 19, n. 109.

84 A, B, and C Numbing that cured him: Cf. Soph. 230 B-D; Rep. 515 D,
517 A

86 B He knows not how , half -convinced: The Platonic Socrates often affects
his hearers as the eloquence of the lady does Milton’s Comus: “She fables not,
I feel.” Cf. Crito 54 D, 44 B 3; Gorg. 513 C, where Ritter (I, 419) misses
the point. Phaedo 84 C; Phaedr. 259 D and 275 B3; Cratyl . 404 A 7; Ion
535 A.

86 B 5 ff. Prepared to affirm: An incidental hint that the argument is not
to be taken too literally is the parallel between 85 D 12, ael kclI rjv eTLcrrTifjiwv,
and the argument of Euthyd. 293 C ff. Plato always limits his dogmatic af¬
firmations to the indispensable minimum of elementary logical and ethical
principles. Cf. Phaedr. 252 C, 265 C; Laws 641 D; Tim. 72 D; Cratyl. 428 A;
Phaedo 114D; Rep. 511 C; cf. Friedlander, I, 219; II, 287; Grote, I, 342;
Mill, IV, 241 and 288. Both exaggerate the dogmatism of Plato’s old age.
Cf. “Recent Platonism in England,” AJP, IX, 281, and “The Interpretation
of the Timaeus,” ibid ., p. 399.

86 E Method of hypothesis: This method is illustrated by a geometrical
example the precise meaning of which has always been a crux of Platonic in¬
terpretation. The problem does not affect the argument and may be left for
a more special study of Plato and mathematics. Cf. F. Schultz, “Uber die
zweite mathematische Stelle in Platons Menon ,” Jahrb.f. klass. Phil., CXXV
(1882), 19-32, which reviews previous literature; S. H. Butcher, “The Geo¬
metrical Problem of the Meno (p. 86 E-87 A),” Jour. Phil., XVII (1888),
219-25; A. Gercke, “Die Hypothesis in Platons Menon,” Arch. f. Gesch. d.
Philos ., II (1889), 171-74; P. Tannery, “L’hypothesegeometrique de Platon,”

WHAT PLATO SAID

5l6

Mem. scientif., II (1912), 400-406; E. Metzger, “Die mathematische Stelle in
Platons Menon,” Sokrates, VII (19x9), 10—18; Apelt, loc. cit.; J. Cook Wilson,
“On the Geometrical Problem in Plato’s Meno 86 E sqq.. Jour. Phil.,
XXVIII (1903), 22a ff.; A. Farquarson, “Socrates’ Diagram in the Meno of
Plato,” Class. Quart., XVII (1923), 21-26. Cf. Thompson ad loc.; Altenberg,
Die Methode der Hypothesis hei Platon; Vaihinger, Die Philosophic des Als Ob,

p. 241.

87 BC The term is indifferent: Cf. Laws 864 AB. Cf. Laws 633 A, 644 A;
Symp. 218 A; Rep. 437 B; Phi/eb. 26 E; Theaet. 184 D, 177 E. Cf. Crito 47 E;
Polit. 259 C, 261 E; Friedlander, II, 544 on Politicus; Soph. 220 D, 259 C,
etc.; Laws 693 C; Charm. 163 D; Theaet. 199 A; Phaedo 100 D 6-7; Euthyd.
285 A, 277 ff.; Rep. 533 D; Laws 627 B, 872 DE. Cf. Eurip. Bacchae 276.
Wilamowitz (I, 289) confounds this precept of dialectics with Hermogenes’
thesis of the conventional origin of language, Cratyl. 384 D, 385, which he
attributes to Plato on the faith of Ep. VII. 343 B.

88 E All the man depends on the soul: Cf. on Charm. 1 56 E; Rep. 403 D;
Menex. 247 E.

89 E Diagnose good children : Huxley, Evol. and Eth ., p. 23, doubts
“whether the keenest judge of character .... could pick out with the least
chance of success those who should be kept/’ Cf. ibid., p. 34.

89 E Anytus : We can only conjecture at what point Anytus joins the
party. Pie apparently remains to the end (100 B 8). That the scene of the
dialogue is the house of Anytus is an improbable conjecture.

90 AB Elaborate irony: The irony is obvious and is proved by Gorg .
487 AB.

90 D, 91 AB Professionals: Cf. Laches 185 ff., 186 C; Theag. 126 B ff.; Ar.
Eth. 1180 bff.

93 A All good citizens teach virtue: Cf. Prot . 324 D f.; Apol. 24 DE;
Theag. 127 A.

93-94 Sympathy for the Sophists: Cf. Phaedr. 'i$'j CD; Rep. 492.

95 A Real meaning of speaking ill: This is often misinterpreted, e.g., by
Apelt ad loc. and by Wilamowitz, I, 281, who takes it as a threat: Anytus will
learn “was Schimpfen ware.” Plato is playing characteristically with the lit¬
eral and the idiomatic meaning of kclk&s \eyeLv. Cf. on Phaedo 115 Phaedr.
258 D; Rep. 392 B, 495 A; Euthyd. 284 D; Ion 532 A. It means both “speak
ill of somebody” and “speak wrongly from the standpoint of Platonic moral
idealism.” When, or if, Anytus learns the true higher meaning of evil speech,
he will no longer be angry with Socrates. There is the same equivocation in
Diog. L. II. 35. Historical conjectures about Lysias’ attack on the Anytus of
Polycrates are, then, superfluous. Cf. Pohlenz, p. 176.

95 C Makes no such claim: There is of course no contradiction between
this and the careless admission extracted from Gorgias in Gorg. 460 A. Cf.
Polus’ comment (ibid. 461 C).

96 A Proves by quotations: Pie quotes Theognis, lines 33_3^ anc^ 435“3^*

97 DE-98 A Statues of Daedalus: Cf. Eurip., frag. 373. Cf. Euthypli.
11 BCD, 15 B. Also mentioned Rep. 529 E; Ion 533 A; Ale. I 121 A; Laws
677 D.

MENO— NOTES

S'7

98 AB Right opinion and knowledge: Cf. Tim. 51 DE; Polit. 309 C; Rep .
430 B; Theaet. 201 D; Unity , p. 48: “Pure infallible knowledge as an ideal
must be sharply distinguished even from true opinion {Tim. 51 DE). Strictly
speaking, it cannot be defined ( Theaet ., infra ; supra , p. 43) and is unattainable
in this life {Phaedo 66, 67; Laws 897 D . . . Poetically it may be described
as the vision of the ideas, and we may be said to approximate to it in propor¬
tion as we “recollect” the ideas by severe dialectic (. supra , n. 323). Practically
knowledge is true opinion, sifted and tested by dialectic, and fixed by causal
reasoning.”

Cf. Complete Poems of Henry More , p. 7, “And true opinion is as faithful a
Guide as Necessity and Demonstration.” Cf. Ar. Met. 981 a 13.

99 B 7 Teach their sons: Cf. Ar. Met. 981 b 7, it is a mark of knowledge
to be able to teach. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan , v. “The signs of science are ....
certain, when he that pretendeth the science of anything can teach the same.”
Cf. Prot. 319 E. Cf. on Symp. 196 E; Ale. I 118 D. Cf. also Polit. 309 D.

99 E Grace divine: Cf. Phaedo 58 E; Laws 875 C, 642 C 8; Apol. 33 C;
Rep. 493 A; Ion 534 C, 536 C. Cf. Prot. 328 E, ovk elvcu avd pwiTLvriv kmpk\eiav.
Cf. Novotny, Plato's Epistles , p. 158 with lit.; Zeller, pp. 594-95; Meifort,
Der Platonismus bei Clemens Alexandrinus, p. 35; Bigg, Christian Platonists
of Alexandria2, 113: “Clement explains differently at different times, Strom,
iv. 22. 138, v. 13, 83. In the latter passage he quotes with approval the
saying of Plato in the Meno , that virtue comes, to those to whom it comes,
deiy poLpa.” Joseph Souilhe, S. J. in Philosophia Perennis (Regensburg, 1930).
1. 13~25-

99 E Soothsayers and poets: Cf. Apol. 22 C; Ion 534 C; cf. Laws 682 A,

Oeiov . ... TO TTOLTJTLKOP 7 kvOS.

100 A Train up his successors (aWov TrocrjaaL): Cf. 99 B. Cf. Symp.
196 E, 7 TOLTjTrjs 6 Oeds (love) crowds ovtojs ware Kal aWov Troiijaai. Cf. Gorg.
449 B, 455 C; Phaedr. 266 C; Euthyph. 3 C; Phaedr. 268 B; Prot. 348 E. Cf.
also Prot. 310 D; Ale. 1 1 18 CD; Isoc. To Demon 3, Trcudeveip aWov s ; Against
the Sophists 13, Antid. 204; Panath. 28; Xen. Oecon. XV. 10. Friedlander,
I.ioo. For the idea cf. Laws XII, passim , and Rep. VII.

EUTHYDEMUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, pp. 123-41.

Cron, Chr., Zu Pl.s “Euthy demos,” “Sitzungsber. der phil.-philol. u. hist. Kl.

der Ak. d. Wiss. zu Miinchen” (1891), pp. 556-638.

Friedlander, II, 178-95.

Gomperz, H., Isokrates und die Sokratik, (tWicncr St.,” XXVII (1905), 1 63—
207; XXVIII (1906), 1-42.

Grote, II, 195-231.

Horn, F., Platonstudien , pp. 145-88. Wien, 1893.

Hottermann, E., “Platos Polemik im Menon , Euthydemus und Menexenos,”
Zeitschrift f. das Gymnasialwesen , LXIII (1909), 87-96.

Luddecke, K., Die Frage der Echtheit und Abfassungszeit des “ Euthydemus .”

Celle, 1897.

Natorp, pp. 119-22.

Raeder, pp. 137-46.

Ritter, pp. 450-62.

Shorey, P., “Plato, Euthydemus 304E,” Class. Phil., XVII (1922), 261.
Taylor, pp. 89-102.

Wilamowitz, I, 299-321; II, 154-68.

NOTES

273 E Divine monitor: Cf. also 272 E and on Euthyph. 3 B. Cf. Laws
682 A, Kara Oeov. On the Daimonion in the Euthydemus cf. Friedlander, I, 40.

272 B Knockdown arguments: I insert this here from 277 D, 288 A. Cf.
Hipp. Maj. 286 C 6; Phaedo 88 C 4; Soph. 232 D (?); Eur. I. A. 1013; Gom¬
perz, Apologie der Heilkunst, p. 1 8 1 ; Diels, Vorsokratiker , II3. 228; Zeller, I,
1354,

273 B ff. Two of a kind: Cf. 294 B, 294 D. Cf. Delacroix, Le langage et
la pensee , p. 127: “Certaines formes inutiles, par exemple le duel, disparais-
sent avec le developpement de la civilization.” Cf. E. M. L., Chaucer , p. 1 17:
“With how sure an instinct by the way Chaucer has anticipated that un¬
written law of the modern drama according to which low comedy characters
always appear in couples.” Cf. also Friedlander, II, 181-82.

Beating your mother: For the logical fallacies in the Euthydemus cf. Gif¬
ford’s edition, Introd., pp. 35 ff. He lists twenty-one, to which he could add
others. He enumerates several examples of the fallacy of equivocation, one of
Fallacia accidentis 298 B 2, and one of Fallacia plurium interrogationum,
300 C 7. For the whole subject he refers to Bonitz, Platonische Studien , II,
266.

Answer to every fallacy: 277 D-278 A, 284 C 7-8 (Ctesippus), 285 A 5 ff.,

518

EUTHYDEMUS— NOTES

5*9

286 C, 286 E-287 A, 287 B 6 ff., 287 E 5, 293 C 6, 295 B, 295 D 1 ff., 295 E 5,
296 A 9, 296 C 6, 298 A 2, 299 C (Ctesippus), 300 B (Ctesippus), 303 E 5.

273 C 8 Self-defense in the courtroom: Cf. Gorg. 526 E 5, 486 B, 509 B,
522 CD.

273 D A^?/ a vocation : Cf. Ar. Eth. 1098 a 32, who perhaps alludes to
Agathon, frag, n (Nauck): “ We make our avocation our vocation and our
vocation just an avocation.”

273 E 5 Profess: Cf. Prot. 319 A; Laches 186 C; Rep. 518 B; Goig. 447 C,
Theag. 127 E. Cf. Xen. Mem. III. 1. 1, I. 2. 8; Isoc. Against Sophists i, 5, 9,
10; Xen. Cyneget. 13. 9; Laches 182 E 3; Ar. Rhet. 1402 a 25.

273 DE As very gods: Cf. 296 D 5, Phaedr. 257 A. Cf. Ar. Acharn. 807,
Wasps 1001.

275 A Protreptic art: Cf. infra, 278 C 5, 282 D 6; Cleitophon 410 D, 408 C.
Cf. my article “Isocrates,” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia ; cf. P. Hartlich, De
exhort ationum a Graecis Romanisque scriptarum historia et indole , “Leipziger
Studien,” XI, 207-336.

275 E Had time to warn him: e^eyevero. Cf. Parmen. 128 D 8; Herod.
VII. 4; Isoc. Antid. 8.

276 BC Burst of applause: aveOopvprjaav. Cf. Prot. 334 C; Symp. 198 A,
213 A; Rep. 492 BC.

276 D Double turn: Cf. Aristeides II. 533. 12.

276 E 5 Inevitable: cupvtcrop can be used of a weapon or an argument. Cf.
Theaet. 165 B 8; Aesch. Eum. 776; Aristoph. Clouds 1047; Aesch. Suppl. 784.
Cf. cupvKTOV o/ifxcLj Prom. 903; kolkwv TpiKv/iia .... a<pvKros , ibid. 101 6;a<pvKTOi
Kvves, Soph. El. 1388. Cf. Philoct. 105 (of an arrow); Trach. 265; Eur. Medea

634-

277 E Right use of words: Plato with friendly irony takes Prodicus’ dis¬
crimination of synonyms as equivalent to the dialectician’s distinction of
meanings. Many modern interpreters seriously confuse the two things.

277E-278A Ambiguity: Ar. Soph. El. 165 b 31; 166 a 30; 165 a 5 ff.
Ethics 1 143 a 12.

278 D Minor Platonic dialogue: Indeed the whole dialogue is a repertory
of Platonic suggestions which illustrate the unity of Plato’s thought. Cf.
Unity , p. 76.

279 B Would dispute that: Cf. Prot. 333 C 2; Rep. 358 C; Phileb. 66 E 3;
Laws 662 C, 885 D 5-7, 889-90. Cf. also 948 E.

279-80 Lucky: Cf. Meno 99 A; Laws 690 C. Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1361 b 39 fF. ;
Eudemian Ethics 1247 b 14; Bonitz, Platonische Studien , pp. 96-97.

280 E Really goods: They are neither-good-nor-bad. Cf. infra , 292 B.
Cf. on Lysis 216 C.

280E-281A Unless wisely used: Cf. Meno 87 E-88 A, 88 E. Cf. Symp.
181 A. Use makes things good or evil. Cf. Isoc. Panath. 223, Archidamus 50,
Eryx. 397 E, and Sext. Empir. Math. XI. 140; Donne, “There’s nothing
simply good nor ill alone; / Of every quality comparison / The only measure is,
and judge opinion.” Cf., slightly aliter , Hamlet , II, 2, “There is nothing either
good or bad but thinking makes it so.” In Plato this idea is moral, but others
misuse it for relativity. Cf. Symp. 180 CD; Democr., frag. 77. Cf. Mande-

5 20

WHAT PLATO SAID

ville, “Fable of the Bees,” Works, I, 345, “There is nothing Good in all the
Universe to the best-designing Man, if either through Mistake or Ignorance
he commits the least Failing in the Use of it.”

281 C More harm than good: With the subtlety of style in 7 roXXa irpaTrwv
cf. Eur., frag. 580. Cf. Eryx . 396 E f. Cf. Epict. I. 8, that “faculties” are
not safe for the uneducated. For the idea that so-called good may sometimes
be evil and vice versa cf. Xen. Mem . I. i. 8 and IV. ii. 31-32. Cf. also Charm.
159-61.

281 D Wisdom: Cf. Lysis 210 B. Cf. 282 A 6. Plato uses as synonyms
the words that Aristotle distinguishes, (ppovrjoLs re Kai aocpia. Cf. Theaet. 176
B 2 with 176 C 4.

281 E Wisdom .... absolute good: Cf. Prot. 345 B 5, 352 C. For the idea
that goods are no good without wisdom cf. also Gorg. 467 A.

282 C delivering them Jrom so long and difficult an inquiry: Cf. Theaet.
185 E; Hipp. Maj. 291 B; Cratyl. 431 A 7; Epist. II. 313 B 2. Cf. Sir James
Fisherson in Galsworthy's novel, “I am glad you admitted that, Miss Ferrar.
Otherwise I should have had to prove it.” It has been fallaciously argued that
this proves the Euthydemus later than the Meno where the teachableness of
virtue (or wisdom) is “still” a problem.

282 E What specific knowledge: I.e., as opposed to the knowledge of the
arts. Cf. 281 A, t6ktovik7], with Rep. 428 C (Loeb).

284 A By itself: Cf. Unity , p. 59, n. 439.

284 BC Speech is of things that are: Cf. Cratyl. 385 B, 429 D; Soph.
242 A ff.; Theaet. 189; infra , 298 C. The Euthydemus is a burlesque of the chief
sophisms of eristic which are at the same time problems of metaphysics.
But it is fanciful to say that the Parmenides is a palinode of the Euthyde?nus.

284 E Frigidly: Cf. the article of La Rue van Hook, \pvxpoTr]s 7) to yf/vxpbv.
Class. Phil., XII (1917), 68-76.

285 A Wrangle about the use of words: So Lincoln : “It is said that the ad¬
mission of West Virginia is secession . Well, if we call it by that name

there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution and
secession in favor of the constitution.” Cf. also on Meno 87 BC.

285 C File Carian corpus: Cf. Laches 187 B; Eurip. Cyclops 655; Otto,

P- 75-

285 C Boil him in a pot: Cf. Aristoph. Clouds 439-50. Hence Ficino com¬
pares Socrates to the Christian martyrs!

285 D No such thing as contradiction: Cf. Ar. Met. 1024 b with schol. of
Alexander, Topics 104 b 21 ; Phys. 185 b; Diog. L. IX. 53. Cf. supra, p. 38.

285 E Method hereafter employed: Cf. 284 C 8-9, 287 C 1, 297 B 2, 297 D,
299 A, 299 E-300 A, 300 E, 303 A. Tiberius (Spengel, Rhet. Grace., Ill, 68)
calls it epBoXrj dvSparos. It is the method of Edward Everett Hale’s parody
of a Sunday-school speech that can go on forever by beginning every sentence
with the last word of the preceding one.

286 BC Ideas long since familiar: Cf. Unity, p. 55. Gifford (p. 36) says
this proves the Euthydemus earlier than Theaet. 161 C. N. Hartmann ( Platos
Logik des Seins) denies this (p. 98). On the pi] ov problem in the Euthydemus
cf. further 298 C 4-5, erepos and the negative.

EUTHYDEMUS— NOTES

521

For the attribution of the fallacy to Protagoras cf. on Theaet. 167 A. For
Socrates’ refusal to take it seriously cf. Cratyl. 429 D and Soph. 239 B, 242 A.
For its refuting itself cf. on Theaet. 167 C.

287 AB A bucket of ashes: This is the meaning. It is not a “construe.”

287 CD How can words mean: So in French one might quibble on “Cela
que veut-il dire?” Has cela a will? For the underlying metaphysical problem
cf. on Charm. 167-68.

289 B Using its products rightly: Cf. Rep. 601 D on the user and inventor;
Cratyl. 390 B; Phaedr. 274 E; Unity , p. 76; Ar. Pol . 1277 b 30, 1282 a 21,
1289 a 17. Cf. also supra on 280 E-281 A.

290 A Magic or spellbinding: KTjXeiv. This is one of Plato’s favorite meta¬
phorical generalizations. Cf. Prot. 328 D 4; Lysis 206 B; Symp. 215 C I; Me -
nex, 235 B i; Rep. 358 B; and many other less directly pertinent cases. Cf.
Unity , p. 64, n. 500.

290 CD Art of the general: Polit. 304 E-305 A; Ion 541 ; and, less perti¬
nently, Soph. 219.

291 A Higher indeed: For 01 Kpeirroves used idiomatically for the gods cf.
Laws 718 A; cf. Campbell on Soph. 216 B. Cf. Symp. 188 D, rots Kpe'iTToaiv
rjpojv Oeol s; Novotny, Plat. Epist., p. 163.

291 B The royal art: Cf. 282 E, 290; Charm. 172 B; Prot. 319 A, 322 B;
Gorg. 501 AB, 503 DE; Polit. 289 CD, 293 D, 309 CD, 292 B, 304 B, 305 AC,
259 A; Rep. 428 D; Theag. 123 E, Symp. 209 A; Erast. 138 BCD. Cf. Democ.,
frag. 157.

Sidney, “All the branches of learning subserve the royal or architectonic
science.”

291 B Chasing larks: Cf. on Euthyph. 4 A.

291 D Ship of state: Aesch. Septem 2-3. Cf. Polit. 302 A 5 ff.; Rep. 488.
See my note on Horace Odes I. 14. Cf. also Laws 758 A and 945 C.

291 D Its function: epyov. Cf. Gifford, p. 43, on Rep. 335 D (Loeb); Ar.
Eth. Nic ., in it.; Isoc. 2. 9.

292 D Transmits itself only: Cf. on Meno 100 A; Polit. 309 D; Rep .
497 CD. But here this Platonic conclusion is defeated by the metaphysical
difficulty of the Charmides , 167 C ff.

Every quip and fallacy: Bonitz {op. cit ., p. hi) tries to discover an order
among them. Cf. ibid., p. 135, parallels with Ar. Soph. El.

293 B At his age: Socrates then is not young.

294 C Number of each other's teeth: Perhaps a hint of their age. Cf. Gif¬
ford’s note, p. 47.

295 D No qualifications or distinctions: E.g., the qualifications when I
know and what I know. For 295 D 1 cf. Ar. Soph. El. XVII, 175 b 8 ff., 176 a
14 ff. and passim.

295 B By that with which he knows: Cf. Ar. De an. 414 a 5, and on the
whole argument here and 297 A cf. the distinct reference in Ar. Met. 1030 a 33
and Rhet. 1401 a 28.

297 D His brother: Or his nephew, Patrocles, of whom he speaks as “my
Iolaus,” i.e., my helper, as Iolaus helped Heracles in the difficult task of
“fighting against two.” Cf. Phaedo 89 C; Rep. 422 AB; Laws 919 B.

$22

WHAT PLATO SAID

298 A And other than a father: Cf. Diog. L. III. 53. Aristotle classifies
this as a fallacy of accident {Soph. El. 166 b 28 ff.).

299 C Colossal statue at Delphi: Cf. Gifford, p. 55. Cf. Laws 795 C, where
the 8e ye recalls the repeated ye’s of Ctesippus’ retort.

300 A Analogy of Greek idiom: tv ap’ apupiPoXiav, Ar. Soph. El. 1 66 a 6 ff.
For (ny&VTa X'eyeiv (300 B) cf. ibid. 166 a 12 and 177 a 22.

300 B They cry aloud: Cf. Od. IX. 392, of iron; Aristoph. Thesm. 28. Cf.
Trot. 329 A; Ar. De an. 420 b 8. Cf. Shakes., Love's Labour s Lost , III, i, 15,
“I say lead is slow . . . . / Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?” Cf.
Pater, Plato and Platonism , p. 114, “A conventional philosopher might speak
of ‘dumb matter.' .... But Plato has lingered too long in braziers’ workshops
to lapse into so stupid an epithet.”

301 A Problem of the Platonic philosophy: This passage is quite obviously
a reference to the doctrine of ideas, though some interpreters, as, e.g., Wila-
mowitz, II, 157, deny it. Cf. Unity , p. 31, n. 199.

301 A Presence of one thing with another: Cf. on Charm. 158 E. Apelt (p.
103) says the fallacy in 300 E-301 A is from Antisthenes. Cf. Zeller, II, 13,
255’.

301 B Is the other: Cf. Phileb. 13 D; Lysis 216 B; on Theaet. 190 C; and
Pamen ., supra, p. 290. English cannot quite reproduce the ambiguity of the
Greek erepos but cf. Alice’s “J am every other day,” and the story of the drunk¬
en man, “Where is the other side of the street?— Over there. — But over there
they told me that the other side was over here.”

302 CD An Athena Phratria: For Apollo Patroos cf. Frazer, Pausanias ,
II. 65. Cf. on Rep. 427 C (Loeb).

302 DE They are animals: For the gods as “animals” cf. Phaedr. 246 CD.
Cf. Laws 904 A; Epin. 984 B 3.

304 E Of no account: The Greek does not say that this is a verbatim quo¬
tation. But cf. Isoc. Panath. 22. On the many misinterpretations of the pas¬
sage cf. my note in Class. Phil., XVII (1922), 261-62; also ibid., XXII (1927),
p. 231, and ibid., 1910, p. 514.

305 A Qiieer comrade: For Socrates as aroTros cf. Theaet. 149 A; Symp.
215 A, 175 A, 221 D; Crito 44 B. Cf. Apelt on Ale. I. 106 A, iii. 215.

305 C Twilight zone: Or “no man’s land,” peObpiov. Cf. Laws 878 B;
Tim. Locr. 102 B; Aristeides II. 518, 20.

305 D 6 Into private debate: Cf. Soph. 232 C 7; Theaet. 177 B; Gorg. 527
B; Pohlenz, p. 363.

305 E Both philosophy and politics: Tim. 19 E seems to approve this
combination as of course the Republic does. Cf. Gorg. 517 B ff.

306 A It is not easy: Cf. Apol. 38 A; Laws 835 C; Rep. 473 E, 489 C,
527 D; Laws 773 CD.

306 AB Mixture . ... is inferior to either: For a biological application of
this principle cf. Conklin, Direction of Human Evolution, on mixed blood.

306 E So queer: oXXokotos . Cf. Rep. 487 D; Theaet. 182 A; Laws 747 D;
Hipp. Maj. 292 C; Prot. 346 A.

Isocratean malice: Cf. Soph. 231 ; Isoc. Hel. 1, Antid. 261, which Wilamo-
witz I. 705 misunderstands.

PHAEDO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archer-Hind, R. D., The “ Phaedo ” of Plato. London, 1883.

Bonitz, Plat. Stud ., pp. 292-323.

BuRxNet, J., Plato's “Phaedo.” Oxford, 1913. Cf. Shorey review, Class. Phil.,
VIII (1913), 232-34.

Doring, A., “Die eschatolog. Mythen Pl.s,” Archiv. J. Gesch. d. Phil., VI

(1893), 475-9°-
Friedlander, II, 321-44.

Gaye, R. K., The Platonic Conception of Immortality and Its Connexion with
the Theory of Ideas. London, 1904. Cf. Shorey’s review, Philos. Rev., XIV
(1905), 590-95.

Geddes, W. D., The “Phaedo” of Plato. London, 1885.

Grote, II, 377-428.

Natorp, pp. 129-67.

Norvin, W., Olympiodorus fra Alexandria og Hans Comrnentar til Platons
“ Phaidon .” K^benhavn og Kristiania, 1915. Cf. Shorey’s review, Class.
Phil., XI (1916), 345-47-

POHLENZ, pp. 3IO-26.

Prum, E., “Der Phaidon iiber Wesen und Bestimmung des Menschen,”
Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos ., XXI (1908), 30-49.

Raeder, pp. 168-81.

Ritter, I, 532-86.

Robin, L., Platon (Bude, IV, Part I). Paris, 1926. Cf. Shorey review, Class.
Phil., XXI, 264.

Rodier, G., “Les preuves de l’immortalite d’apres le Phedon, "L'annee phi-
losophique, XVIII (1907), 37-53.

Rohde, E., Psyche, pp. 137-97, 296-335. Tubingen, 1910.

Shorey, P., “Aristotle on ‘Coming-To-Be’ and ‘Passing-Away,’ ” Class.
Phil., XVII (1922), 334-52.

- , “The Origin of the Syllogism,” Class. Phil., XIX (1924), 1-19.

- , Unity, pp. 35, 41, 77-

Stallbaum-Wohlrab, Platonis “Phaedo.” Lipsiae, 1875.

Stewart, J. A., The Myths of Plato, pp. 77— 111.

Taylor, pp. 175-208.

Tumarkin, A., “Der Unsterblichkeitsgedanke in Platos Phlidon ,” Rhein.

Mus., LXXV (1926), 58-83.

WlL AMO WITZ, I, I72-79, 323-56; II, 56-62.

NOTES

Refeiredto as Plato's treatise on the soul: Cf. Plato Ep. XIII. 363 A; Anth.
Pal., VII. 471, IX, 358; Diog. L. II. 65, III. 58; Cic. Tusc. I. 11; Cell. II. 18;
Macr. Sat. I. n; St. Aug. De civ. I. 22.

523

524

WHAT PLATO SAID

The day of Socrates' death : Cf. 61 E and Unity , pp. 41-42.

Influence on Aristotle: Cf. Shorey in Class . Phil., XVII, 349.

57 A Socrates' last day: Xen. Mem. IV. 8. 2, Socrates spent thirty days in
the prison.

57 A At Phlius: In northeastern Peloponnesus. Good description in Bur¬
net, and Frazer, Pausanias , III, 75-76.

59 BC There were present: Cf. the lists in Apol. 33 E-34 A and Prot.
314 E-15 A, 315 C-E, and the list of twenty-eight guests in the Symposium.

59 B 10 Plato was ill: Plato mentions himself elsewhere only in Apol.
34 A 1, 38 B 6. He does not, like Cicero, take part in his own dialogues,
though the Athenian stranger in the Laws may represent him, and the
Eleatic of the Sophist and Politicus sometimes does, ol/jlcll does not imply
doubt. Cf. Class. Phil., XV (1920), 201 and Friedliinder, II, 19.

59 C Aristippus: This has been attributed to malice. Cf. Athenaeus
504 f.

59 C Cleombrotus: He may or may not be the Cleombrotus of Ambracia
who threw himself into the sea after reading the Phaedo. Anth. Pal., VII, 471.
Cf. Milton, P.L. Ill, 471, “He who to enjoy / Plato’s Elysium leapt into the
sea.” Cic. Tusc. I. 34.

59 D The ship from Delos: During the sacred season of its absence from
Athens no executions could take place. Cf. Crito 43 C. 58 B explains this in
detail. Cf. Plut. Theseus 23; Ar. Ath. Pol. 56; Bacchyl . XVI (XVII). 1 ff.
with Jebb’s note.

60 A Xanthippe: The conception of Xanthippe as a shrew comes from
Xen. Mem. II. 2. 7; Symp. 2. 10 and later anecdotes. Cf. Zeller, p. 54, n. 2.

60 B Close connection of pleasure and pain: Cf. Antiphon, frag. 49; Diels,
II3, 300, 4; Plautus Amphitryo II. 2.3: “Itadis placitum, voluptatem utmae-
ror comes consequatur.” If this contradicts the Philebus, it contradicts 59 A.
But Plato is not psychologizing here; he is speaking of pleasure and pain
broadly as facts of experience. Cf. Isoc. Demon. 46.

60 C With two heads and one body: Emped., frag. 57; 61 (Diels); Gellius
N.A. VII. i; von Arnim, Stoics, II, 336.

60 D Evenus: Cf. Apol. 20 B; Phaedr. 267 A. Cf. Loeb Elegy and Iambus,
I, 466 ff.

60 E A dream: Cf. Apol. 33 C; Crito 44 AB. On dreams cf. also Tim.
45 E-46 A, 71; Rep. 571 C-572 A; Laws 910 A.

60 E-61 A The daily music of the philosophic life: Shakes., Othello; cf. Mil-
ton, Comus: “Divine philosophy .... musical as is Apollo’s lute”; Sidney:
“He said the music best thilk powers pleased / was sweet accord between our
wit and will.” Cf. also Laches 188 D. Cf. fjLovcrLKrjv kv aaTrLSc, Eur. Suppl. 906;
Class. Phil., VIII (1913), 233; Pater, Marius the Epicurean, chap, xxviii:
“Life .... a kind of music, all-sufficing to the trained ear, even as it died out
on the air.”

60 E 2, 61 AB Scrupulous, arffoaiov/ievos. Cf. Phileb. 12 B Not here in the
sense “perfunctorily.” Cf. Laws 874 A 2, 752 D, 873 B 7; Phaedr. 242 C 3;
Ep. VII. 331 B 4.

PHAEDO— NOTES 525

60 D 2 Proemium: Cf. Epict. II. 6. 26 and IV. 4. 22, “We shall be dis¬
ciples of Socrates when we can write paeans [sic] in prison.”

61 B 4 Tales , not arguments : For X070S as opposed to /jlvOos. Cf. Gorg.
523 A, Protag. 320 C, 324 D, Tun. 26 E. The distinction is not always ob¬
served. Cf. Polit. 274 B i, and in Ionic /jlvOos means \070s and fable is alvos.
Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that he thought Du Bartas was not a
poet but a verser because he wrote not fiction. Cf. further Saintsbury, Hist,
of Crit ., II, 98.

61 B 5 Not an inventor of tales: The “contradiction” with Phaedr. 275 B,
where Socrates can easily invent Egyptian or any other tales, need trouble
nobody. On Socrates as a poet cf. Schanz, “Sokrates als vermeintlicher Dich-
ter,” Hermes , XXIX, 597-603. Schanz holds that this notion, like the oracle
in the Apology , is an invention of Plato's art.

61 C End his life by violence: Cf. Laws 873 C. On the whole page cf.
Frutiger, Les mythes de Platon , pp. 57 ff.; Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy , I,
iv, “The Platonists approve of it ... . upon a necessity, and Socrates himself
defends it in Plato’s Phaedon .” Burton must be thinking of Laws 873 C. Cf.
Epict. Diss. I. 9. 16 and cf. Zeller, Philos, d. Gr., III3, 1, pp. 305-9. Aristotle
{Eth. Nic. 1 1 16 a 13) thinks it is often cowardice. Cf. Friedlander, II, 322;
Grote, IV, 373; Apelt, Phaedo , p. 135. Hume {Enquiry) quotes Seneca Ep.
XII in defense of suicide and argues that Christianity does not forbid it. For
the Epicurean view cf. Tennyson, Lucretius , “Our privilege / What beast has
heart to do it and what man / What Roman would be dragged in triumph
thus?” Cf. A. Chiapelli, Del suicidio nei dialoghi platonici (Rome: Reale Ac-
cad. dei Lincei, 1885), pp. 222-33; R. Hirzel, “Der Selbstmord,” Archiv /.
Religionswissenschaft, II, 75-206; Bonitz, pp. 313-23; E. Brehier, “Plotin,”
Enneades , I, 78, 13 1; Inge, Christian Ethics , p. 394.

61 D The Pythagorean Philolaus: Philolaus, a famous Pythagorean phi¬
losopher and contemporary of Socrates, was a native of Crotona (Diog. L.
VIII. 84) or of Tarentum (Iambi. Pit. Pyth. 36). Shortly before the death of
Socrates he settled at Thebes and was for some time the teacher of Simmias
and Cebes. He was the first to commit to writing the doctrines of Pythagoras.
His work in three books is said to have been bought by Plato for 100 drachmas
and to have been used by him in writing his Timaeus. The genuineness of
Philolaus’ fragments has been questioned by By water {Jour. Phil., I [1868],
21 ff.), but today only those from his work 7 rept \pvxv s are generally rejected.
Cf. Aug. Boeckh, Philolaos des Pythagoreers Lehren , nebst den Bruchstiicken
seines Werkes (Berlin, 1819); Zeller, I6, 369 ff., and for the fragments, Diels,
Vorsokr ., I3, 301-20; Erich Frank, Platon und die sogcnannten Pythagorder ,
passim.

61 D Secret doctrine: Cf. Theaet. 152 C. Cf. Phileb., supra , p. 320, and
infra , p. 607. Plato, in the words of George Eliot, affirms a healthy moral in¬
stinct by playing with mysticism. Cf. on Laws 865 DE and on 62 B.

62 B That we are in ward: For the question whether ward means “watch”
or “prison” cf. Burnet ad loc .; Norvin, on Olympiodorus , p. 84. Cf. Tennyson,
Lucretius: “Or lend an ear to Plato when he says / That men like soldiers may

526

WHAT PLATO SAID

not quit the post / Allotted by the gods/’ Addison’s Cato v. i “It must be
so— -Plato thou reasonest well — ” disregards the prohibition, but he adds in
the interest of religion and virtue: “I’ve been too hasty.” For (f>povpa c f. Gorg.
525 A; Cic. De sen. 20.

62 B Too high for Socrates : Plato is willing that others should reinforce
sound instincts and fundamental ethics by the sanctions of theology or mysti¬
cism but there is usually a touch of irony in the unction of such concessions.
Cf. supra on 61 D. Cf. Meno 86 B.

62 C-E Leave this world which good gods govern: A hint of the idea of
Rep. 590 CD that it is better to be governed by a better.

62 E-63 A Pleased by the inquiring spirit: Jowett “earnestness.” Cf. Lysis
213 D 7; Prot. 335 D 7. The word tt pay pareLa later took on various specific
meanings, among others that of treatise. Polybius, I. 3. 1, uses it of his book.

63 D Leitmotif of the impending death: Cf. 61 E, 67 C, 76 B 1 1, 78 A, 80
D7, 85 B,^ 89 C 7, 107 A, 116B6, 116E2.

63 E “Non possumus" of Socrates' reply: Cf. Gorg. 474 A. Charm. 157 C.
Crito 46 B, 54 D. Cf. “Can only tell the truth,” Apol. 17 BC; Symp. 198 D,
199 AB; Ion 532 DE.

65 CD Who dies to the body every day: Cf. Seneca Cons, ad Marc. XIII;
Arnold, Lit. and Dogma, pp. 185 ff.; St. Paul and Protestantism, pp. 64 and 76;
Goethe, “Stirb und werde”; Rabelais, III, 31. Cf. Shakes., Macbeth , IV, iii,
in: “Died every day she lived.” Cf. the many passages in St. Paul’s writings
which on Matthew Arnold’s interpretation express this thought, e.g., Col.
3:3; Gal. 2:19-20; Rom. 6:2-11 and 8:10-13; and perhaps I Cor. 15:31;
II Cor. 4:10-11; II Tim. 2:11.

65 DE Without the obtrusions of sense: Cf. Rep. 510 B 6-9, 524 D, 529 B,
529-30.

65 B Even the poets tell us: Plato may be alluding to Empedocles (Diels,
I3, 223 fr. 2), or to Xenophanes {ibid., I3, 64, fr. 34).

68 C Therefore a lover of wealth and of honor: The tripartite division of
the soul is here suggested. Cf. Rep. 435 ff., infra, 82 C 6-7. Cf. Unity, p.
42. But many interpreters deny this. Cf. J. L. Stocks, “Plato and the Tri¬
partite Soul,” Mind, XXIV (1915), 218. Some find a hint of it in Go?y. 403
AB; others not.

66 C Pha7ito?ns: Norvin (p. 84) takes eldwiKaiv of the unreality of the lower
pleasures; cf. Rep. 587 D.

67 B Purge himself of this infection: Cf. II Tim. 2:21; Isa. 52:11; II Cor.
6:17 and 7:1.

67 B 2 Lay hold on the pure: Often quoted, especially by neo-Plato-
nists and Christians. Cf. Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria-, 125; Inge,
Christian Ethics, p. 79 (on St. Paul); I Cor. 15:50. Cf. Rom. 8:8.

68 B See wisdom face to face: Cf. Tennyson, “I hope to see my pilot face
to face / When I have crossed the bar.” (frpovTjcris is used throughout the
Phaedo in a broad, half-religious sense; cf. Class. Phil., XXI (1926), 382;
Matthew Arnold, “Hebraism and Hellenism,” in Culture and Anarchy. Cf.
Livingston, p. 137. Shelley, Adonais, stanza 52: “Die / If thou wouldst be
with that which thou dost seek.”

PHAEDO— NOTES

S27

68 D 12 A form of cowardice: This and what follows is a religious and
psychological correction of the matter-of-fact utilitarianism of the Protagoras.
Yet Prot . 325 A is in the same vein. Ethical theory can find a reconciliation,
but the tone is different. Cf.onPr0Z.357 ff., supra, pp. 130-31. Cf. Mackintosh,
Diss.: “It is always prudent to be courageous; but a man who fights because
he thinks it more hazardous to yield is not brave, etc.” Cf. Mandeville, Fable
of the Bees , I, 219: “At least most men would be cowards if they durst.” He
refers to Aristotle’s Ethics for the application of the same principle to tem¬
perance, but overlooks the Phacdo. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics , p. 360 ff.

69 C 1 Purification: Kadapais. Cf. Plot. I. 2. 4.

69 A 9 The one true currency: The metaphor will not bear a literal-minded
explicitness of interpretation but all emendations of the passage are misap¬
prehensions. Cf. Eurip., frag. 546; Alcaeus Lyr. Graec. 25s; Burnet’s note, p.
42; Wilamowitz, I, 418; Emerson says ( Compensation ): “The swindler swin¬
dles himself, for the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth
and credit are signs.”

69 B 7 Fit for slaves: Cf. Symp. 215 E; Phaedr. 258 E; Theaet. 175 D;
Rep. 430 B 8. Cf. the Stoic and Cynic use of ar8pcuro8or.

69 C And wisdom itself: For the ethical tone cf. Prot. 325 A; Rep. 443 B,
591 E, 618 C.

69 E Dogma of immortality: This doubt is broadly human now as then.
All specific inferences from this passage and Rep. 608 D are uncritical, and
likewise all attempts to distinguish Socrates from Plato. Cf. Jowett, II3,
170 ff. (In trod, to Phaedo ), and on Rep. X (Loeb).

70 A Fear that the soul is a breath: Cf. infra , 77 C; Tennyson, Lucretius:
“Thus — thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air”; Lucret. III. 443, 456,
and 509: “Cum validis vends aetatem degere posse.” Cf. commentators on
Virg. Aen. IV. 660; Pater, Marius the Epicurean , ch. VIII. Cf. Shakes., Rich¬
ard Ilf I,4:

But still the envious flood
Stopt in my soul and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wandering air.

Cf. Browning’s “That puff of vapor from his mouth, man’s soul.” Cf. Joachim
Bohme, Die Seele und das Ich im Homerischen Epos (1929), pp. 113 and 119.

70 C Even a comedian: An allusion to the attacks of such comic poets as
Aristophanes ( Clouds 1485; Birds 1282, 1553; Fi'ogs 1482-99); Eupolis, frag.
352 (Kock); Ameipsias. Cf. Diog. L. II. 28. For a8o\eax& cf. Polit. 299 B 7;
Cratyl. 401 B 8; Theaet. 195 B 10; Phaedr. 270 A i; Parmen. 135 D 5; Rep.
489 A I; Erast. 132 B. Plato, like Matthew Arnold in reply to Frederick Har¬
rison, ironically adopts for himself (i.e., for his Socrates) the language of his
critics. So a classicist of today might speak to an audience of his “useless”
studies.

70 DE Grows out of: Cf. my paper on “Aristotle on Becoming,” Class.
Phil., XVII (1922), 334-52 and my note on yiyveaOcu e£, AJP, X (1889),
64-65. Cf. Olymp. (Norvin, pp. 96 ff.) For assimilation of predication to
physical relation cf. the whole theory of ideas with Origin of Syllogism, pp.
7-8, Hipp. Maj. 300 C-302 D and on Rep. 369 A.

WHAT PLATO SAID

528

72 C 1 Wouldn't be in it: Lit., “Endymion would be nowhere.” Cf. Gorg.
456 B.

72 E Socrates' favorite doctrine : This passage is used by those who attrib¬
ute nearly all Platonism to Socrates. Cf. on Crito 46 B.

73 A Never been taught geometry: Cf. the feeble imitation in Xen. Oecon.
XVIII. 3 where Ischomachus similarly proves to Socrates that he already
knows the principles of agriculture. Cf. the irony of XVIII. 9.

75 B Strive: optyerai. This word is not to be pressed, as is too often done,
in order to discover here the doctrine of treats attributed to Aristotle. Cf.
Complete Poems of Henry More , p. in: “Yet doth the soul of suchlike forms
discourse / And finden fault at this deficiency, / And rightly term this better
and that worse, / Wherefore the measure is our own Idee.” Cf. Boethius III.
10: The imperfect proves the existence of the perfect; which may be one
source of Anselm’s and Descartes’s proof of the existence of God.

76 B Render an account: For bovva 1 \byov cf. 95 D; Rep. 531 E; Theaet.
175 CD; Prot. 336 C; Polit. 286 A; Theaet. 202 C; Charm. 165 B; Meno 81 A;
Theaet. 183 D. Cf. also Xen. Oecon. XI. 22; Prot. 338 D; Rep. 344 D; Polit.
285 E; Laws 774 B; and forXoyov \a0eiv Meno 75 D; Theaet. 148 D, 208 D;
Soph. 221 B, 246 C; Rep. 402 A, 534 B; Laws 653 B, 645 B.

76 E 3 As surely . ... so sure: Cf. on Polit. 284 D. The special illustra¬
tion from mathematical ideas is of interest since it incidentally raises the ques¬
tions debated between Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes and still debated to¬
day between Empiricists and Kantians. It does not justify the notion that
mathematical conceptions gave rise to Plato’s theory of ideas. Cf. Transac¬
tions of the I international Philosophical Congress , VI, 577-78.

78 A When thou art gone: Cf. Xen. Mem. IV. 8. 11, iroOovvTes eKeivov,
etc. Cf. John 6:68 (Eng. version).

78 B ff. Confirm our conclusion by analogies: Such confirmations are a fea¬
ture of Plato’s style or method. It is sometimes important to distinguish them
from the main substantive argument. Cf. Rep. 442 E ff.; Phileb. 64 D ff.;
Laws 903 B; Rep. 433 E, 464 AB, 486 A; Gorg. 497 D; Ale. I 116 B; Lysis
217 A; Laches 186 D 1-2; Phileb. 55 A.

78 E Take their names: Cf. Parmen. 133 D 3; Soph. 234 B 7; Tim. 41 C 6,
52 A 5. Ar. Met. 987 b 10 uses avvcovv/jLWP. He has made technical distinctions
between homonyms, synonyms, and paronyms, which Plato does not need.
But cf. Met. 990 b 6 and 991 a 6.

79 C 7 Wanders: For TfKavaw as a synonym of error cf. Rep. 484 B, 505 C;
Lysis 213 E; Soph. 230 B 5; Ale. 1 1 12 D, 117 A; Phaedr. 263 B; Laws 962 D;
Parmen. 135 E, 136 E. So the Latin errare.

80 C 7 Favorable circumstances: Lit., “in such a season.” This is variously
interpreted as the month of February, and the climate of Egypt. TOLavTjj by
Greek idiom should repeat the idea of the preceding epithet.

81 CD Wraiths about tombs: There is no more superstition in this than
in Milton’s reminiscence of the passage in Comus:

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies and imbrutes till she quite lose,

PHAEDO— NOTES

529

The divine property of her first being.

Such arc those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults, and sepulchres,

Ling’ring and sitting by a new-made grave,

As loath to leave the body that it loved.

For et 8oo\a, cf. Od . XI. 213; Lowell, Endymion:

Or was it some eidolon merely, sent
By her who rules the shades in banishment.

81 E-82B Reincarnated : Cf. infra, 107 E, 113 A; supra , 70 C; Rep. 617
Eff.; Phaedr. 248-49; Meno 81 BC; Tim . 42 A-D, 91 D ff.; Laws 872 E,
903 D, and perhaps 904 D f. Cf. Thompson on Meno , Excursus 6; Benn,
Greek Philosophers , p. 193. Apelt ( Cratyl ., p. 142) says Cratyl. 403 proves
transmigration mythical for Plato. Cf. Empedocles, Diels, I3, 199, 205; Karl
Gronau, Poseidonios und die Jiidisch-Christliche Genesis-exegese , pp. 196 ff. ;
Drerup, Rhet. Studien , XVI, 27, Bielmeier. Nemesius says Iamblichus rightly
says transmigration takes place only from animal to animal and from man to
man.

81 E That typify their several dispositions: Cf. Rep. 618-20, and for simi¬
lar lists, Phaedr. 248-49; Tim. 42 A-D, 91 D ff.

82 B 8 Moderate: perpios is usually a term of praise, but is here used with
a touch of irony as in Euthyd. 305 D; Gorg. 484 C. The idealist can be as con¬
temptuous of “bourgeois” morality as the immoralist. Cf. Phaedr. 256 E—
257 A.

82 AB Ordinary virtues: Cf. Rep. 430 C, 500 D; Laws 968 A, 710 A.

82 B 6 Political animal: That is, a social animal. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1097
b 11, 1162 a 17; Pol. I. 1253 a 7, and III. 1278 b 19; Macrobius In Sonin.
Scip. I. 8. 6, “Quia sociale animal est”; Sen. Clem. 1. 3. 2; Ben. 7. 1.7.

82 C For these reasons: Cf. Emerson, Man the Reformer: “Parched corn
eaten today that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on Sunday is a baseness;
but parched corn .... that I may be free of all perturbations .... and docile
to what the mind shall speak .... is frugality for gods and heroes.” Cf.
Theaet. 176 D 7 ff.; infra on 83 C.

84 A 6 Penelope's web: Cf. Homer Od. II. 104-5. Cf. the same idea con¬
veyed by a different image in Gorg. 493-94. Cf. also Gorg. 507 E. Cf. Sidney’s
sonnet: “Thou web of will whose end is never wrought / Desire . ”

Cf. also on Rep. I. 329 C (Loeb). Some see in the word yaXrjvrjv, 84 A 7,
and others deny, an allusion to Democritus (Wil., II, 271 on Natorp). Cf.
Eurip. I. A. 546.

83 A 3 Which releases them: Cf. 82 D 6, 83 B 5, 84 A 3. Cf. Rep. 517 A 5,
515 C 4, 532 B 6. Cf. supra, 67 D, where death is called Xutrts.

82 E The prison-house of the appetites: Cf. Rossetti’s “Even through the
body’s prison-bars.”

83 A 6 Anchorites: Plato’s verb has not yet quite this technical meaning.
We have an approximation to the later technical meaning in Polyb. XXIX.
10. 5, a vexup^aw ck T&v irpayparcnv = retired from public life, and in the use of

53°

WHAT PLATO SAID

the word in Ptolemaic Egypt in the sense of fleeing from the heavy obligations
imposed by the state (Wilcken, Archiv, V, 222; cf. Preisigke Worterbuch , s.v. 4).
The verb attains its technical meaning first in Epiphanius II. 340 A; ava-
X&PW is is already technical in Athanasius II. 853 A. Cf. Sophocles Lex. on
these words. Cf. avaxcoprjaas, Symp. 175 A; schol. Plato Ale . I. 122 A, p. 281,
on Zoroaster: TLfiTjcraL re avTOv ttjv avaK€xwpriKviav dLayooyrjv toov ttoW&v. Cf.
Epict. II. 1. 10 and Seneca’s “Cum secesseris” (Ep. VII. 6. 6).

83 C For they alone know: For a similar but not identical statement of
the ethical “sanction” cf. Theaet. 176 E. Plato transcends the hedonistic cal¬
culus on a higher plane of feeling. Cf. on Prot. 357 A.

83 D As with a nail: Cf. James, Psychology , II, 306: “Among all sensa¬
tions the most belief compelling are those productive of pleasure or pain.”
Cf. p. 309. Similarly Hume on the passions and belief; cf. Mill: “Any strong
passion renders us credulous as to the existence of objects which excite it”
(Logic, V. 1. 3).

84 B Thejood of their thought: Cf. Prot. 313 C; Soph. 223 E; Phaedr.
248 B.

84 B Their true ho?ne: I infer this touch from the Crito 44 B, but the
whole tone of the Phaedo implies it.

84 E The swan which sings: Cf. Shorey on Horace Od. IV. 3. 20; Hesiod

Shield 315 is irrelevant. Cf. Rep. 620 A; Aesch. Ag. 1444-45; ^nth. Pal., VII,
12 and 19; Chrysipp. ap. Ath. 616 B (Ael.); Polyb. XXX. 4. 7; XXXI. 20. i;
Leutsch-Schneidewin, I, 258; II, 118. Cf. Wordsworth, “I heard, alas, ’twas
only in a Dream . For is she not the votary of Apollo.”

85 CD Most plausible of human hypotheses as the raft: Cf. Laws 699 B;
Cic. Tusc. I. 30: “tamquam in rate in mari immenso.”

85 D Some divine logos: Cf. Epicharmus (Diels, I3, 129), frag. 57, a pas¬
sage much quoted by Christian writers ancient and modern.

85 D Bring us to the haven: Is Simmias here the mouthpiece of Plato?
Cf. Symp . 179 D, and on Parmen. 135 BC.

86 B Hot , cold, moist, and dry: An anticipation of the Aristotelian ele¬
ments. They are still in Milton the traditional elements. Cf. Symp. 186 D 7*
Laws 889 B, 891 C.

86 C When the lute is broken: Cf. Shelley’s

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute.

James, op. cit., I, 133* So the melody floats from the harp-string, but neither
checks nor quickens its vibrations; so the shadow runs alongside^the pedestri¬
an, but in no way influences his steps.”

86 E May have time: Cf. Prot. 339 E 4 and perhaps Euthyd. 275 E 8.
The same words are used in a different context in Symp. 184 A 6. This is of
course not Plato’s real artistic reason for arranging his material in this order.

87 B 1 he vestment of the soul: Cf. Gorg. 523 C 5> eial acopiara.

Cf. Emped. 402, aapnuv .... x^wpl; Emped., frag. 126 (Diels, I3, 270);
Pindar Hem. XI. 16; Eurip. Bacchae 74b? aapKos evdvra (Tyrrell note); Plerc.
Fur. 1269, vapris TrepqSoXcu’ (Wilamowitz note). Cf.Anth. Pal., VII, 49, 2;

PHAEDO— NOTES

53i

Ar. Be an. 407 b; Rep . 620 C 3. Cf. Macrobius (Teubner) 518 and early
Christian poets. Cf. Petrarch, Rime , Canzone II:

Cf. Shakes.:
Dekker;

Wordsworth:

Oh, aspettata in ciel beata e bella
Anima, che di nostra umanitade
Vestita vai, non come 1’altre carca.

This muddy vesture of decay;

The best of men that e’er
Wore earth about him was a sufferer.

It seems the eternal soul is clothed in thee
With purer robes than those of flesh and blood.

Tennyson, In Mem., LXXXIV:

Till slowly worn her earthly robe

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe.

Cf. George Meredith:

When we have thrown off this old suit
So much in need of mending,

To sink among the naked mute,

Is that, think you, our ending?

88 B Not therefore proved immortal and indestructible: Cf. Fontenelle’s
“Within the memory of a rose no one has ever seen a gardener die.”

89 B With Phaedo' s hair: Cf. Xen. Apol. 28. Cf. Swinburne to Landor:
“Nor one most sacred hand be prest upon my hair.” Tennyson, Princess:
“The hand that played the patron with her curls.” wpon'ea as, 89 B 3, has
been “pressed” to mean that Socrates wishes to see how Phaedo will look with
his hair cropped.

89 C Like the Argives: Cf. Herod. I. 82, “The Argives .... shaved their
heads .... and vowed that no Argive should let his hair grow long before
they recovered Thyreae.”

89 D Misology: Cf. Laches 188 C; Rep. 41 1 D (Loeb). The idea is al¬
ready in Lysis 218 D, coairep avOpdoivois a\a £o<nv Xoyois. Cf. infra, 92 D. Cf.
0tXoXoyias, Theaet. 146 A. Cf. John Morley’s “sombre hierarchs of mi¬
sology.” I use some of Mill’s words for Plato’s thought (Mill, IV, 317): “He
almost became infected with the misology so impressively deprecated in his
own Phaedon .” Cf. p. 290. The typical modern misologist is Mr. Bernard
Shaw: “Because, my friend, beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality,
art, patriotism, bravery, and the rest are nothing but words which I or anyone
else can turn inside out like a glove.” Cf. Walton’s Hooker, II, 378 for a para¬
phrase of Plato. Cf. Minucius Felix XIV. 6: “Ne odio identidem sermonum
omnium laboremus, etc.”

90 A Extremes are rare: Space forbids quotation of ponderous modern
experiments and statistics to prove this commonplace.

532

WHAT PLATO SAID

go D Attribute our failures to ourselves: This is Plato’s own practice. Cf.
on Charm . 175 E. (Wil., I, 277 on Meno 80 E seems to miss the point. Pie
says it is a different Socrates.) Cf. Cratyl. 41 1 C; Soph. 230 B 9; Theaet.
168 A, 150 E; Apol. 23 C 8; Laws 727 B; Rep. 619 C; Epict. III. 19. 2 and
Encheirid. 5.

91 C Not for Socrates , but for the truth: Cf. Rep. 595 C 3. Cf. Ar. Eth.
1096 a 16 (Stewart). Ultimate source of the proverb, “Amicus Plato sed magis
arnica veritas.” Don Quixote, chap, li; Luther, De servo arbitrio: “Amicus
Plato, amicus Socrates, sed praehonoranda veritas.” Ammonius, Life of Aris¬
totle, <j)L\os pev 'ZuKpaTrjs, aWa tj a\i]0aa. Cicero would shock these

devotees of truth with his “Errare malo cum Platone .... quam cum istis
vera sentire” ( Tusc . I. 17. 39); Justin Martyr, Apolog. II. 3.

91 C leaving his sting behind: Cf. Eupolis, frag. 94 (Kock).

92 A mere analogy: Pater {Plato and Platonism, p. 84) completely mis¬
understands and misapplies this sentence. His discussion of the Phaedo {ibid.,
pp. 83-87) contains several such errors and yet is worth reading. Cf. my re¬
view, {Chicago) Dial , XIV (1893), 21 1. Cf. Philosophical Writings of Henry
More , p. 13 1 : “. . . . Without a Soul, by Virtue of the Spirits and Organiza¬
tion of the Body, may doe all those feats that we ordinarily conceive to be
performed by Soul and Body joyned together.” Cf. supra , 86 and on 86 C.
Gomperz (III, 43) correctly says that harmony = materialism. Cf. also Apelt,
pp. 142-44; Grote, II, 391, who quotes Wyttenbach and Galen. Cf. Tim .
37 A; Robin, Physique , pp. 51, 56.

93 B Admit of degi'ees of more or less: Aristotle got the tottos of paWov /cat
rjTTOv from this passage and the Phileb. 26 D and 23 AB. Cf. on Phileb. 24 E.

93-94 On the precise interpretation of this passage cf. Shorey, Class.
Phil., VIII (1913), 234; XI (1916), 345-46; and XXI (19-6), 265; Pohlenz,
p. 313; Ueberw.-Pr., p. 268; Gomperz, III, 330.

93 BC Tension of the nerves determine: The modern language brings out
but does not alter Plato’s thought. Cf. Laws 644 D-645 B.

94 DE Odysseus' rebuke to his own heart becomes inexplicable: Homer Od.
XX. 17-18. Quoted also in Rep. 390 D. Cf. ibid. 436-37, 439 C ff. Cf. the
frequent apostrophes of the heart or Ov/jlos in tragedy. What more do we
learn from “one of the primary functions of the new brain is the inhibition
of impulses of the old brain and of even lower nervous centres”?

96 AB Socrates' youthful endeavors: Cic. De nat. Deor. II. 32 ff.; Zeller,
pp. 766, 767; Diels, I3, 387.

That this canyiot be done: Cf. my article in the Philos. Rev., XIV (1905),
590-95; Introd. to Loeb, Rep., Vol. II on Book X; Unity, p. 41. Cf. Ritter,
I, 563; Friedlander, II, 329.

Come into being and pass away: Cf. supra on 70 DE; infra on 96 A.

Belong to Socrates or to Plato: Cf. the special pleading of Burnet, p. xxxix,
and his misuse of Aristotle. Derenne (p. 88) says the passage does not refer to
Plato’s own evolution, which was different.

The fallacy which most admit is present: Cf. Unity, p. 41 and notes on Book
X of the Loeb Rep. Apelt says Plato’s proof is a classical example of logical

PHAEDO— NOTES

533

mysticism. Grote approves Wyttenbach, who pronounces the argument to
be obscure and unsatisfactory. Cicero says that Panaetius rejected the Phaedo
because of it. He himself (or his mouthpiece) assents only while he reads.
Cf. Zeller, pp. 825 fF.; Bonitz, op. cit 3., pp. 299, 300 ff.303.

96 A When I was a young man: Similarly the Eleatic stranger in Soph.
243 B 7. Hence in both cases it is Plato. Cf. Soph. 239 B on prj op with Euthyd.
286 C, both again Plato.

96 A 8 Study of nature: irepl ^uaecos. Cf. on Lysis 214 B. For iaropiap cf.
Eurip., frag. 902, oXjftios oar is rrjs urropias tax* pcLdrjaLP.

96 A 8 History: I.e., “Enquiry/* Cf. Herod. I. i; Hobbes, Leviathan , I,
9, “The register of knowledge of fact is called history, whereof there be two
sorts: one called natural history; .... the other is civil history/’

96 A 8 Lordly thing: vireplj^apop is ironical. Cf. Gorg. 51 1 D 5; Meno 90 A
6; Symp. 217 E; and Cratyl. 392 A, aeppop.

96 A Passes away and exists: Cf. 97 C 7; Rep. 437 A (Loeb). The phrase
7repi yeveaecos /cat <t>0opas (95 E 9) is the title of an Aristotelian treatise. Cf.
Parmen. 136 B \Phileb. 55 A; Laws 894 B. Cf. the derivation of Malebranche’s
title, La recherche de la verite from a phrase of Descartes.

96 B Fermentation of heat and cold: Cf. Antiphon (Diels, II3. 297); J.
Arthur Thomson, Science and Religion (New York, 1925), p. 106: “By a proc¬
ess of natural synthesis .... from some colloidal carbonaceous slime ac¬
tivated by ferments”; Perrier, The Earth before History , pp. 68-69: “The liv¬
ing slime remains free and mobile.”

96 B Is the blood: Cf. Emped., frag. 105 (Diels, I3, 261): aljua yap au-
OpoJTOLs irepiKapdiop kari porjfia ) Virgil Georgies II. 484: “Circum praecordia
sanguis”; Lucret. III. 43:

Et se scire animae naturam sanguinis esse
Aut etiam venti, si fert ita forte voluntas;

Cic. Tusc. I. 10; Sir John Davies:

One thinks the soul is air, another fire,

Another blood diffused about the heart, etc.

Cf. on Laws X.

96 B From which are derived memory and opinion: For the psychology
cf. Phileb. 38 BC; on Charm. 158E-159A; Ar. Met. 980 a 28 and De an.
407 a 33-

96 B Stability: Grote compares Meno 97-98. Cf. perhaps rather Ar. An.
post., 100 b 6 the passage which stirs Grote, Gomperz, and even Ross to
such ecstasy of approval.

For 96 E ff. cf. supra, 179, 94, 271.

96 BC Phaenomena of earth: He expected Anaxagoras to tell him (97 D)
not only whether it is flat (Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus) or
round (Parmenides and the Pythagoreans), at the center or elsewhere, but also
why it is better so. Plato’s own decision is that it is round (108 E-109 A)
and is sustained at the center by no (Empedoclean) vortex, but because, be-

534

WHAT PLATO SAID

ing in equilibrium in the middle of a uniform substance, there is no reason for
it to incline in any direction. Cf. Tim. 40 B, Heath, Aristarchus , pp. 143 ff.

96 C Incapacitated for this sort of inquiry: The references to earlier philos¬
ophers here are probably generalized. Cf. on Soph. 242 C.

98 BC Made no use of his principle: This passage and the whole of the
Timaeus have always exasperated thinkers for whom any suggestion of tele¬
ology is anathema. Plato has been accused of “fanaticism” and unfavorably
compared with Aristotle in oblivion of the fact that Aristotle himself adopts
this censure of Anaxagoras. Cf. Met. 985 a 20. Cf. on Apol. 26 DE. In pro¬
visional “Apology” for Plato cf. the language of Eddington, Science and the
Unseen World , p. 16, “something outside nature’s regular plan”; p. 19, “if
nature’s arithmetic had overlooked the number six”; and pp. 66-67 on t^le
meaning “of the phenomenon of armistice day.”

99 A Not his idea of the best: The precise expression, idea of good, does
not occur outside of Rep. 505 A, 517 C, 508 E and Cratyl. 418 E, where the
meaning is different. But the conception is unmistakable. Cf. 99 a 2 with
Laws 864 A, 99 C 5, 97 D 3, 97 E 2. For “idea of the best” cf. Tim . 46 C
and Epict. Diss. I. 11. 30.

99 AB Cause and condition: Cf. on Tim. 46 C; Phileb. 27 A 8; Polit.
287 CD; Unity , n. 461.

99 C Second best thing: The idiom bevrepos ir\ov$ (cf. Polit. 300 C; Phileb.
19 C; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1109 a 36) is said to mean taking to the oars when the
wind fails. In this passage the meaning is that the tautological logic of the
theory of ideas is a second best as compared with the renounced teleology, but
is at least better than purely mechanistic explanations. The passage has been
much misinterpreted and in particular the teleological method is sometimes
identified with the theory of ideas. Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., V (1910), 514-15;
XIX (1924), 7; XXI (1926), 264; XXII (1927), hi. “He [Adolfo Levi] em¬
phasizes, as I was perhaps the first to do, and as Ritter has since done, the
obvious yet repeatedly denied fact that the Phaedo provisionally renounced
the teleological explanation of the world.” Cf. also “Interpretation of the
Ti?naeus,}yAJP , IX, 406; Friedlander, II, 334; I, 126. Cf. AJP, IX, 304.

99 DE The simpler theory of ideas: This is the interpretation given of this
passage in my dissertation, pp. 13 f.; my paper on the Timaeus AJP , IX,
406; and more fully in my “Origin of the Syllogism,” Class. Phil., XIX (1924),
6-8. I need not delay for partial coincidences with later writers.

99 E Blinded in soul: He does not quite say “eye of the mind.” Cf. on
Rep. 519 B (Loeb). Cf. Friedlander, I, 12 and n., 15, 90 n.

99 DE Took refuge in words or discussions: For misinterpretations of this
passage cf. on 99 C. Burnet ( Greek Phil., p. 146) renders “propositions rather
than facts.” Cf. “Recent Platonism,” p. 304; Jowett wrongly, “the old and
safe method of ideas.” He must be thinking of Rep. X. 596 A 6.

99 E Less direct approach to truth than sense: Cf. Laws 736 B; Rep. 473 A
(Loeb) 487 C, 588 D with Soph. 234 E 1-2.

100 A Posit as true whatever agreed with it: Jowett (II, 13) completely
misunderstands: “They [the ideas] are not more certain than facts, but they
are equally certain.”

PHAEDO— NOTES

535

ioo B The reality of his much-talked-of ideas: Cf. Rep . X. 596 A; Tim .
51 BC. This of course does not mean that every Platonic idea is itself a hy¬
pothesis. Cf. Friedlander, II, 334. Cf. on Euthyph. 9 E; Hipp. Maj. 288 A.

100 CD Must be dismissed: Cf. “Origin of the Syllogism,” p. 6.

100 D It makes no difference which: Many interpreters disregard this. For
irapovala cf. on Charm . 158 E. Parmen. 13 1 DE states the problem without
the word. Cf. also Symp. 21 1 B 3. But Phaedo 101 BC also drops the word.
For tt poay evopkvr) cf. Hipp . Maj. 289 D 4.

100 D Substitution of the logical reason: Cf. “Origin of the Syllogism,”
6-7 and passim .

100 Eg By a head: Perhaps suggested by II. III. 168.

101 E At the same time: For the significance of this cf. on Rep. 510 B
(Loeb) the avvirdOerov. Cf. also Epict. Diss. I. 7. 22.

102 C Relative to the smallness of Socrates: Offering his smallness to be
exceeded by the tallness of the one and proffering his tallness to exceed the
smallness of the other. Plato laughs at his own pedantry. Cf. Theaet.
153 CD; Parmen. 150 B 6, D 2. Cf. also on Cratyl. 425 D. For the structure
of the sentence cf. Gildersleeve on Geddes, AJP , VI, 496. The scholiast takes
vvyy pa<j>iK&s as a reference to the Gorgian figures (in Thucydides!). So ap¬
parently Norden, Kunstsprache, I, hi. But Professor Bateson’s presidential
address to the British Association at Melbourne in 1914 leaves Gorgias and
Plato far behind: “When the tall pea is crossed with the dwarf, since the off¬
spring is tall, we say that the tall parent passed the factor into the cross¬
bred, which makes it tall. The pure tall parent had two doses of this factor,
the dwarf had none; and since the cross-bred is tall we say that one dose of
the dominant tallness is enough to give the full height. The reasoning seems
unanswerable.”

101 CD Develop its consequences: Cf. Parmen. 135 E-136. For the dis¬
puted significance of to ev 17 piv peyeOcs, 102 D (cf. Parmen. 130 B 4, 133
E 5, 150 BC) cf. “Origin of Syllogism,” p. 10, n. 1, and Unity , n. 284.

101 E Something sufficient: Cf. Rep. 510 B 5 (Loeb). The t navov here is
flit practical equivalent of the bwiroOerov. Cf. my Idea of Good , p. 233; Sten-
zel, Dial ., p. 18.

Precise location or description: Cf. supra on 96 AB; Arnold, Lit. and Dogma ,
pp. 339“4°: “By what futilities the demonstration of our immortality may
be attempted is to be seen in Plato’s Phaedo ”; Gomperz, III, 45: “In the
second argument the soul signifies the principle of knowledge, but in the third
the principle of life: Cf. my note on Rep. 352 DE (Loeb) and 330 DE; and
ibid. 609 A ff., with notes.

Elsewhere: Cf. Loeb, Rep., Vol. II, notes on Book X, and my review of
Gaye, The Platonic Conception of I?nmortality, etc., in Philos. Rev., XIV (1905),
590-95.

107 C An eternal hazard: There is no real difference between Plato’s
thought here and that in Gorg. 526-27 and Rep. 620 AB. Plato is willing to
use the hope of immortality as a supplementary motive. But the main em¬
phasis is on the moral purity of the soul (107 C 7; Gorg. 527 B 1-5 ff.; Rep .

WHAT PLATO SAID

536

618 C, 621 C 2). The contradictions which overingenious or literal-minded
interpreters think they see do not exist.

107-8 Into a proportion: Cf. Gorg. 465 BC; Rep. 534 A, 576 C, 508 BC,
530 D, 509 D ff. (Friedlander, II, 256 n.); Tim. 32 B, 32 A, 29 C. Cf. infra ,
hi A.

109 A As he conceives it: It is, as Frutiger says ( Mythes de Platon , pp.
61 ff.), a myth and not a scientific treatise. See Friedlander, I, 1 12-13, on the
geography of the Phaedo. He discusses the development of geography from
the Phaedo to the Timaeus , ignoring the literary motive in the Phaedo .

109 BC Sediment: Cf. Lucret. V. 496, “Omnis mundi quasi limus”; Diog.

L. VII. 136.

109 E 5 On the brightness of space: ra eicei. Cf. Phaedr. 247 CD.
iio-ii “. . . . fairest of their evening stars’*: Cf. also Locksley Hall Sixty
Years After: “Earth so large and yet so bounded, pools of salt and plots of
land / Shallow skies of green and azure, chains of mountains, grains of sand.”

1 12 C Irrigators plying the shadoof: The word is not in Plato. But he may
have been thinking of the thing if he ever visited Egypt. Cf. supra , p. 25.

1 12 C Running through their wonted channels: Cf. Homer II. XII. 33 and
Lucretius’ pretty line, V. 272, “Qua via secta semel liquido pede detulit un-
das.” See Vering, Platons Dialoge , Erste Reihe, 222 on the rivers.

112E Would be uphill for them from either side: Note the relativity of
“up” and “down.” Jowett’s “precipice” is a misconception. Cf. on Rep. 584
DE (Loeb) and Tim. 62 CD. Cf. Zeller, Ar. (Eng.), I, 428.

1 13 D (cf. 107 D) His demon: Cf. Heraclitus’ fjOos avOpwirw dalpwp. This
is not the superstitious daemon which later literature developed from Symp.
202 E, but the “god within the mind,” the higher soul of a nobler Platonic
tradition. Cf. Rep. 617 DE; Tim. 90 A; Menander fr. 550 Kock; Seneca
Ep. XLI. 2, “Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, etc.”; Marc. Aurel. V. 27 and
passim. Cf. Pope’s “The god within the mind”; Young, Night Thoughts , III,
10, “Our reason, guardian angel and our God”; Matthew Arnold, Palladium;
Swinburne, Pref. to Songs before Sunrise: “Because man’s soul is man’s god
still”; Shorey on Horace Odes III. 17. 14. Cf. also on Symp. 202 E.

113D Vehicles: oxwo-tcl. For the word cf. Polit. 288 A, 289 B; Phaedo
85 D; Tim. 41 E, 44 E, 69 C; Phaedr. 14.7 B; Hipp. Maj. 295 D; Epin. 986 B,
and the neo-Platonists. Cf. R. C. Kissling, AJP , XLIII (1922), 318-30; Sir
Oliver Lodge, Making of Men , goes back to it. He says that life needs a
material vehicle, but that it may be ether, not matter. Cf. also Harris, Duns
Scotus; supra on Ale. I 129 D.

1 13 D 7 Undergoing purification: For the suggestion of purgatory cf. also
Gorg. 525 B; Rep. 365 A, 615 AB, 619 D 4; Virgil Aen. VI. 739 ff.

113E The incurable: Cf. on Prot. 324 AB. For avt aroi, cf. Rep. 615 E-
616 A; Gorg. 525 C-E, 526 B. Cf. also Rep. 410 A; Laws 854 E, 941 D-942 A;
Gorg. 480 B; Laws 728 C, 731 B-D, 735 E, 862 E-863 A, 957 E-958 A.

114 C 8 Fair is the prize and the hope is great: This is often quoted.

1 14 D 6 A noble venture: For /caXos 6 klp8vpos} cf. Lysias XXXIV. 8. Cf.

M. Giovanni, “La bella ventura platonica (Fedone) nell’ Etica del Come Se,”
Atti d. r. Istituto Veneto di scienzei lettere e arti , LXXXIX, 71-95.

PHAEDO— NOTES

537

1 14 D Croon such words over to ourselves: c f. supra , 77 E; Laws 903 B i;
Unity , n. 500. Cf. Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism , p. 8: “The religious
world, following its bent of trying to describe what it loves, amplifying and
again amplifying its description . ”

1 14 E With the ornaments that belong to it: Cf. Gorg. 506 E, 504 C; Phaedr.
239 D; Anon. Iambi., frag. 4 (Diels), which perhaps proves that much attrib¬
uted to the Anonymous is borrowed from Plato. Cf. also I Pet. 3:3-4: “Let
it not be that outward adorning [6 efadev koct/ios] .... but .... the orna¬
ment of a meek and quiet spirit.”

115 B In view of the life to come: Cf. Gorg. 526 D, 527 E. For the fallacy
of attributing feeling to the corpse cf. Axiochus 365 DE; Lucret. III. 881.

115 E Speak ill: Cf. on Meno 95 A 5; Ar. Pol. 1326 b 5 with Oliver Wen¬
dell Holmes’s playful interpretation: “Words lead to things, a scale is more
precise / Coarse speech, bad language, swearing, drinking, vice.” Cf. also
Mill, Theism , p. 248, and Shorey, review of Robin, Phaedo (Bude), in Class .
Phil., XXI (1926), 267. Cf. Charm. 157 A 4. Cf. Isoc. To Nic. 38. Cf. Mill:
“But in philosophy especially when it touches the ultimate foundations of
our reason wrong language is as misleading as a wrong opinion.” Cf. A. Her-
mant, Platon , p. 158: “C’est parler improprement, 6 excellent Criton, et il ne
faut jamais parler improprement; car on n’offense pas seulement la grammaire,
on fait mal aux ames.”

n6Aff. Sixty generations of readers: Cf. Macaulay, Bacon: “Those fair
pupils of Ascham and Alymer .... who .... sat in the lonely oriel with
eyes riveted to the immortal page which tells how meekly and bravely the
first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailer.”

117 A Greedily: Cf. Crito 53 E; Isoc. Archidamus 109. Cf. Oliver Wendel
Holmes, Over the Teacups. Hesiod, Works and Days , 367.

117 D Sobs of Apollodorus: Grote quotes Tac. Hist. II. 48 on the death
of Otho: “Placidus ore intrepidus verbis intempestivas suorum lacrimas coer-
cens.” Cf. Young, Night Thoughts , p. vii, Pref.: “Yet this great master of
temper was angry .... at his last hour .... for a right and tender instance

of true friendship . This fact well considered would make our infidels

withdraw their admiration from Socrates.”

1 17 DE Having heard that a man ought to die amid propitious sounds: For
the evasion yet use of mysticism cf. supra on 62 B; Phaedr. 235 C; Meno
81 A.

1 18 A A cock to Aesculapius: There is a literature of conjectural interpre¬
tation ranging from the idea that it is merely Socrates’ conformity to the re¬
ligion of the state (cf. Xen. Mem. 1. 3. 1, voixw iroXews) to the fancy that Aescu¬
lapius, the healer, now heals him of the long disease, his life. Cf. Grote, II,
418; Friedlander, I, 162; Vering, Platons Dialoge (Erste Reihe), p. 222. The
Christian Fathers rebuke this concession to popular religion as they do Socra¬
tes’ paying his devotion to Bendis (Rep. I. 327 A). Cf. Tertullian De an. c. 1 :
“. . . . quae nullum Aesculapio gallinaceum reddi iubens praevaricetur.”

118 A 16 The men of that day whom we knew: t&v Tore quoted is for me a
mark of the spuriousness of Ep. VII (324 E). Many critics regard it as a
touch of pathos there.

MENEXENUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Croiset, A., Sur le “Menexene” de Platon , “Melanges Perrot” (1902), pp.
59~63-

Friedlander, II, 219-32.

Grote, III, 401-12.

Hottermann, E., “Platos Polemik im Menon , Euthydemos und Menexenos ,”
Zeitschr.f. d. Gymnasialwesen , LXIII (1909), 96-102.

POHLENZ, pp. 256-309.

Raeder, pp. 125-27.

Ritter, I, 485-96.

Shawyer, J. A., The “ Menexenus ” of Plato. Oxford, 1906.

Shorey, P., “The So-called ‘Archon Basileus’ and Plato Menexenus 238 D,”
Class. Phil., V (1910), 361.

Taylor, pp. 41-45.

Trendelenburg, A., Erlauterungen zu Platos “ Menexenus .” Berlin: Progr.
Friedrichs-Gymn., 1905.

Wendland, P., “Die Tendenz des Platonischen Menexenos ,” Hermes , XXV

(1890), 171-95-

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 267-69; II, I26-43.

NOTES

The latest event: The Peace of Antalcidas in 387 b.c.

Its purpose and purport: Cf. Pohlenz on Wilamowitz, Gott. Gel. Anz. (1921),
1-3, p. 14; on Wilamowitz, Cambridge History , Vol. V, 389. Cf. Quiller-Couch,
Art of Writing, p. 183; Studies in Lit., p. 146; Pohlenz, pp. 256-309. Wil. (II.
126 ff.) says it is no parody, but cf. Athenae. XI. 506 f; Diels, II3, 285. Raeder
(pp. 125 f.) dismisses it briefly, “Nur ein kleiner Scherz.” A. Croiset, p. 59^:
“L’authenticite du Menexene n’est plus guere mise en doute aujourd’hui. A
vrai dire, on pourrait s’etonner qu’elle eut jamais fait question.”

Compete with Isocrates: For parallels, whatever they may signify, cf. the
Panegyricus of Isocrates 24, 25, 28, 29, 39, 52, 53, 68, 91, 158. Also Peace 82,
94; Areopagit. 74; Panatli. 125, 1 51; Philip 147 ; Archidam. 91, 108. Cf. Poh¬
lenz, p. 306.

234 AB Supplies the Athenians with rulers: Cf. Theag. 123 DE-124 E 10.
Cf. John Stuart Mill, Essays, IV, 59: “The young fribbles of family who for¬
merly did us the honor to legislate for us.”

235 D Patriotic commonplaces on hand: Cf. Hazlitt, On the Difference be¬
tween Writing and Speaking: “He who has got a speech by heart on any par¬
ticular occasion cannot be much gravelled for lack of matter on any similar
occasion in future, etc.”

538

MENEXENUS— NOTES

539

235 D Praising Athenians to Athenians. Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1367 b 8.

235 E Connus : Son of Metrobius. A teacher of music and a cithara-
player. In Euthyd. 272 C Socrates mentions him as his teacher. Cf. Apelt,
Vol. Ill (. Menexenus , p. 161); Pohlenz, p. 262, n. i; Wil., II, 139; Bruns, Lit.
Portrdt d. Gr., pp. 317, 358.

236 A Lampros and Antiphon: Lampros was one of the outstanding mu¬
sicians of Greece (Aristoxenus apud Plut. De rnusica c. 31). He was ridiculed
by Phrynichus the comic poet as a water-drinker (A then. II 44 d).

236 B Learned from Aspasia : It has been conjectured that Plato took
the suggestion from a lost dialogue on Aspasia of Aeschines. Cf. Dittmar,
Aeschines von Sphettos , p. 20; Plutarch Pericles § 24 (165 C); Synesius Dio II.
321 (Teubner).

237-39 Athenian funeral oration: Cf. T. C. Burgess, Epideictic Litera¬
ture , “University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology,” III, 147-48.

237 B Autochthons: Cf. Crit. 109 D 2; Ar. Rhet. 1360 b 31 ; Isoc. Panegyr.
24 and note in Loeb Isoc.; Panath. 125; Burgess, pp. 1 53—54; Panegyr. 25;
Rep. 414 E (Loeb) and 470 D. Cf. also Tim. 40 B and 24 CD.

237 CD Strife and judgment: Cf. Rep. 379 E 5, Ar. Rhet. 1398 b, Cic.
Tusc . I. 47. Plato is using an obvious “topic” of rhetoric, and it is hyper¬
critical to press the “contradiction” with the Pindaric “unction” of Crit.
109 B 2.

238 A Only creature that knows justice and the gods: Cf. Prot. 322 A; Laws
902 B; Tim. 41 E-42 A.

238 A Free from all grudging and envy: Cf. Phaedr. 247 A; Tim. 29 E 2.
Cf. also Isoc. Panegyr. 29 of Athens. Cf. Commentators on Lucretius VI. 1.

238 CD In reality an aristocracy . ... as chosen . ... : Cf. Shorey in
Class. Phil., V, 361-62. Rousseau ( Contrat social) says there are three kinds
of aristocracy — natural, elective, hereditary. The second is best. Cf. Faguet,
Rousseau penseur, p. 29 6-, Eighteenth Century , p. 387; Mill, II, no, review of
Tocqueville: . . . The people, it is said, have the strongest interest in select¬

ing the right men.” Cf. Isoc. Areopag. 61; Ar. Pol. 1309 a 2-3, 1318 b 34.
Cf. H. Belloc’s characterization of the British government as an oligarchy en¬
joying a peculiar respect from its fellow-citizens ( The House of Conunons and
Monarchy , p. 13). Cf. Ar. Pol. 1292 a 27. Vinogradoff {Hist. Jurisprudence ,
II, 104) oddly calls it “an aristocracy of the many who love virtue.” For per
evdo^Las (238D 1) cf. Meno 99 B; Laws 950 C; infra , 247 B; Isoc. Archidam.
91 ; Polyb. XVIII. 51* 10. Cf. XXII. 11.6.

238 D Obscurity of his ancestors: Cf. Thucyd. II. 37. 1-2 and for aTe\ii-
Xarcu cf. Isoc. IX. 66. For the general expression of the Periclean ideal cf.
Laws 634 A, 642 C D.

238 D 8 One criterion: opos. Cf. Rep. 551 A 12, C 2; Laws 626 B; Polit. 292
C, 293 E, 296 E; Ar. Pol. 1280 a 7, Rhet. 1366 a 4, Polyb. 6. 5. 9.

238 E As masters or slaves: Cf. Rep. 417 B, 577 CD; Laws 756 E-757 A.
Cf. Eurip., Suppl. 403-8, No tyrants here; Shakes., Henry V , I, 2, “We are
no tyrant, but a Christian king.”

239 A Equality before the law: For (frvais and popos cf. on Rep. 359 C
(Loeb); Eurip. Ion 643; Isoc. Demon . 10.

540

WHAT PLATO SAID

For praise of Athens cf. also Eurip., Suppl. 379-80; Erechtheus, frag. 362.
239 B The poets: Cf. Burgess, Epideictic Literature, p. 1 54. Cf. Isoc. Pane-
gyr. 54 ffi, 68 ff.

239 B Revealed: fxrjvvcraL. Cf. Lysias II. 54.

239D ff. Licentiously with historical facts as a7J orator: Grote, Hist, of
Greece (ed. 1869), IX, 185-86, n. 2, takes Plato to task for the following
statements in the Menexenus: That while all the allies of Athens were will¬
ing to surrender the Asiatic cities at the request of Artaxerxes, Athens alone
refused to agree to this and was consequently deserted by her allies. That
Athens did not subscribe to the treaty of Antalcidas. (He refers to Aristeid.,
Panathen . 172, who says that the Athenians were forced to sign it because
their allies deserted them.) He thinks that all historical allusions in the Menex¬
enus must be taken with great caution. Cf. also Taylor, p. 43; Pohlenz,
pp. 285 ff. Cf. the statements that Athens enters the war against her will
(242 a) and fights always on the side of the weak and the oppressed. Cf.
Shawyer, pp. x-xviii.

240 E Liberation: Cf. Laws 698-99. Cf. Lysias II. 47. For the conjunc¬
tion of f?JXos and (frOovos in 242 A cf. Lysias II. 48. With the formula evOb.be
KeivTai 242 D, 242 E, and, illogically, of those not recovered after the battle
of Arginusae, 243 C, cf. Lysias II. 55 and II. 64.

Other Greeks: 242 A 7, 242 B 2, with Rep. 469-70; 243 A 1, 244 B 7,
244 E 3, 245 A 2, 245 B 2, 245 C 5.

243 E Exemplary ?noderation: Cf. Isoc. Hel. 37, Areopagit. 67-68, Antid.
20; cf. on Rep. 558 A (Loeb).

246 E All other possessions and pursuits: Cf. on Laws 662 B. Cf. Apol.
30 B, “All these things shall be added unto you”; supra , 240 D 6-7; Prot.
325 A; Theaet. 172 D-177 C; Gorg. and Rep., passim. Cf. especially Crit.
121 A; Laws 728 A, 660 E-663 B; Ar. Pol. 1323 b 40. Cf. 1334 a 21. Cf. Isoc.
Peace 32. To Demon. 5-7.

246 E The coward: Plato passes without warning from “virtue” to brav¬
ery in war.

246 E Its shame more conspicuous: Cf. Ovid. Met. XIII. 105, “Ipse nitor
galeae claro radiantis ab auro / Insidias prodet, manifestabitque latentem”;
Boethius II. 6.

246 E-247 A Is knavishness , not wisdom: Cf. Theaet. 176 CD; Laws 747 C.

247 B A glorious inheritance: Xen. Mem. III. 5. 3. Cf. Goethe:

Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast,

Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.

Philostratos I. 22 (Loeb) Wright, p. 88.

247 D But for good and honorable sons: Cf. the anecdote about Xenophon
upon hearing of his son Gryllus’ death (“I knew my son was mortal”); Diog.
L. II. 55; Valer. Max. V. 10; Aelian Par. hist. III. 3. The same anecdote is
attributed to Anaxagoras and Solon in Diog. L. II. 13. For the idea cf. Epict.
III. 24. 105.

247 E Nothing too much: Cf. Eliza G. Wilkins’ The Delphic Maxims in
Literature (Chicago, 1929).

MENEXENUS— NOTES

541

247 E-248 A On himself alone: Cf. on Hipp. Min.y init.

248 A Elated or depressed by her caprices: Cf. Shorey on Horace Odes II.
3. 1-4, III. 29, 49-56.

248 B 7 If indeed the dead feel aught: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic . 1101 a 22 — b 9;
Catull. XCVI, “Si quicquam mutis”; Tac. Agric. 46, “Si quis piorum manibus
locus, etc.”; Ep. II. 31 1 C7-8; Pindar, 01. VIII. 77; Eur. Here. fur. 490;
Heracl. 59 2~935 Anth. Pal.y VII, 23. Cf. Apol. 41 A 8; Tennyson, In Mem.y
38, “If any care for what is here survive in Spirits rendered free.” Cf. Pater,
Marius the Epicurean , p. 14, “If any such considerations regarding them
reach the shadowy people . ” Cf. Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity , p. 26.

SYMPOSIUM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brochard, V., “Sur le ‘Banquet’ de Platon/’ Annie phil., XVII (1906), 1-32.
Bruns, Ivo., “Attische Liebestheorien und die zeitliche Folge des Plato-
nischen Phaidros sowieder beiden Symposien,” Neue Jahrbiicher , V (1900),
17-37-

Bury, R. G., The “ Symposium” of Plato. Cambridge, 1909.

Crain, P., De ratione quae inter P/s. Phaedrum Symposiumqiie intercedat ,
“Comment, philol. Jenenses,” VII, 2. Leipzig, 1906.

Friedlander, II, 294-320.

Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers , II, 379-97.

Grote, III, 1-55 (with the Phaedrus).

Hug-Schone, Platons Symposion.” Leipzig, 1909.

von Kleemann, A., Das Problem des Pl. “ Symp.” “Progr. Sophiengymn.”
Wien, 1906.

Koch, M., Die Rede des Sokrates in Platons “ Symposion ” und das Problem der
Erotik. Berlin, 1886.

Lagerborg, R., Platonische Liebe. Leipzig, 1926.

Natorp, pp. 167-79.

Pohlenz, pp. 365-94 (with Lysis).

Raeder, pp. 158-68.

Ritter, I, 504-31.

Robin, L., La the orie plat, de V amour. Paris, 1908.

- , Platon: CEuvres completes , IV, Part II. Paris, 1929.

Schirlitz, C., “Die Reihenfolge der funf ersten Reden in Pis. Symp.,”
Jahrb.f. kl. Philol ., CXLVII (1893), 561-85, 641-65, 721-47.

Shorey, P., “Note on Symposium 172 A,” Class. Phil., XXV (1930), 386.
Stewart, J. A., The Myths of Plato, pp. 397-450 (the two Symposium myths).
Taylor, pp. 209-34.

Wilamowitz, I, 356-92; II, 169-78.

NOTES

The Symposium: Plato does not use the word avinroviov but calls it crvvov-
ala, ovvbenvvov or beiirvov. Cf. 172 B, 176 E, 174 A. Cf. Josef Martin, Sym¬
posion, p. 149.

One Aristodemus: Aristodemus, a native of Cydathenaeum, was a fervent
admirer and a pupil of Socrates. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. iv. 2.

173 B By questioning Socrates himself: Cf. Theaet. 143 A; Parmen. 126 C 2.

174 D 5 Meditation on a problem: Cf. Prot. 314 C; infra, 175 AB, 220 C;
Horace Sat. I. 9. Plato never represents this Socratic self-absorption as a
meditation extatique. Burnet, Phaedo xlvii, misapprehends. Cf. also Rep.
549 D 6.

542

SYMPOSIUM— NOTES

543

175 C The wisdom: too <ro</>ou. Cf. Euthyd. 293 D 8; Gorg. 483 A 2.

176 E Eryxi?nachus: Cf. the full discussion of his personality, the typi¬
cal role of the physician in Symposian literature, and the style of his speech
in Plato in Martin, pp. 85-88 ff.

176 E Dismiss the flute-girl: For flute-girls cf. Prot. 347 CD; Theaet. 173
D 5; infra, 212 C and D, 215 C; Isoc. Areop. 48; Antid. 287; cf. also Xen.
Symp. III. 2 and Boswell’s Johnson on those who have neither the will nor
the power to entertain one another.

177 A 4 Not his tale: A familiar quotation from Euripides’ Melanippe ,
frag. 488 (Nauck). Cf. Apol. 20 E. Cf. Horace Sat. II. 2.2, “Nec meus hie ser-
mo est.”

177 BC On every conceivable trifle: Cf. A. S. Pease, “On Things without
Honor,” Class. Phil., XXI (1926), 27-42. Cf. Isoc. X. 8 ff.

178 B Neglect of the poets: Cf. on Phaedr. 247 C.

For 178 B Robin cities Ar. Met. 984 b 26 and Simpl. Phys. XXIX. 18.

178 E Would be invincible: Cf. Xen. Symp. VIII. 32; Joel II. 903, 912-
13. Cf. the “Sacred Band of Thebes.”

178 E Die for another: Cf. Fenelon apud Decliarme , Euripides (trans.),
p. 211.

179 E To avenge Patroclus: Cf. Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies III, Mystery
of Life, § 1 14, on Achilles.

179 D With a cheating phantom: Phaedrus is here rather the mouthpiece
of Plato. For other instances of a character falling out of his role cf. on Par-
men. 135 BC.

180 C Pausanias: Pausanias of the deme of Cerameis was a friend and
lover of the poet Agathon (Xen. Symp. VIII. 32; Athen. V. 216 e). Accord¬
ing to Ael. Var. hist. II. 21, he accompanied Agathon to the court of Arche-
laus. The scholiast on Plat. Symp. 172 A calls him rpayiKos. Cf. Prot. 315 D.
Cf. Hug-Schone, pp. xxxv-xxxviii; Kirchner, Prosopog. Ath., No. 11717.

180 D Earthly or Pandemian: Cf. Xen. Symp. VIII. 9. For “vulgar”
Aphrodite cf. Frazer, Pausanias, II, 245, and for “heavenly” Aphrodite ibid.,
pp. 129, 1 91. The words had not in Greek cults the associations which later
literature and art (e.g., in Lowell and Titian) derived from Plato.

183 B Perjuries of lovers: Cf. schol. ad loc., who quotes Hesiod (Rzach),
frag. 187. Cf. Phileb. 65 C. It became a poetical commonplace. Cf. Callim.
Epig. 25; Aristaenet. XX; Anth. Pal., V. 8, 55; Publilius Syr. (Orelli) 22;
Tibull. I. 4. 21, III. 6. 49; Ovid Ars. Am. I. 633; Horace Odes II. 8. 13; Clau-
dian De nupt. Honor. 83; Shakes., Rom. and Jul., III, ii, 2; Nauck 525.

181 B Love of soul: Cf. Laws 837 B-D; Ale. 1 131 CD; Xen. Symp. VIII.
10 ff.; Agesil. XI. 10; Eurip., frag. 659 (N.). Cf. Amphis, frag. 15 (Kock,
II. 240):

What say you? Do you expect me to believe
There is an Eros that’s only of the mind,

And disregards the pleasure of the eye?

A crazy notion! I am as like to think
The pauper sitteth at the rich man’s door
For contemplation and for nothing more.

544 WHAT PLATO SAID

Cf. Alexis Helena , frag. 70 (Kock, II, 320):

Whoso loves nothing but the body’s bloom
And counts all else as idle smoke and fume
His love by pleasure, not by love is bought,

And wrongs the immortal god with mortal thought;

And by his base example makes mankind
Distrust the heavenly Eros of the mind.

181 E4 A law to themselves: Cf. Propert. IV. 11. 47; “Mi natura dedit
leges a sanguine ductas.” Cf. Ar Eth. 1128 a 32.

Distasteful to modem feeling: The difference of Greek, and, until the recent
vogue of Proust, modern opinion on this point, the distinction between the
sentiment and the abuses too often associated with it, the question of the
precise attitude in the matter of Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato at different
periods of his life (cf. Phacdr. 263 C, 265 E, Laws 837 A, Unity , p. 19), these
topics have been so endlessly and unprofitably discussed that I dismiss them
with reference to the “literature.” Cf. Lagerborg, chap, iv: Plato tind die
Knabenliehe , pp. 61 ff.; Bethe, “Die dorische Knabenliebe. Ihre Ethik und
ihre Idee,” Rhein. Mus ., LXII (1907), 438-75; O. Kiefer, “Platons Stellung
zur Homosexualitat,” Jahrb. f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen , VI, No. 1 (1905),
107-26; G. F. Rettig, “Knabenliebe und Frauenliebe in Platons Symposion ,”
Philologus, XLI (1882), 414-44; L. Dugas, Lamitib antique (Paris, 1894),
pp. 84 ff.; M. Wohlrab, “Knabenliebe und Frauenliebe im Platon. Sympo¬
sion ,” Jahrb. f. klass. Philol ., CXIX (1879), 673-84. Lucian’s satire makes it
distinctive of Socrates {Sale of Lives 15). Cf. also Friedlander, II, 303-4.

Especially amusing are the complaints of some modern “liberals” that
their teachers never told them how vicious the Greeks were. In the interpre¬
tation of Plato today we are more likely to err by suspecting evil where there
is none.

185 C Came to a pause: For the “Gorgian figures” or polyphonic prose
in Plato cf. Agathon’s speech infra, 194 E ff.; Rep. 498 DE; Gorg. 467 B 11;
Euthyd. 304 E 5; Hipp. Maj. 282 A 6-8; Menex. 236 E 4-5, 238 B 6; Phaedo
102 D 1-2; Rep. 439 C 6; Laches 188 B 5; and many minor instances. For
the pun on the name cf. Rep. 614 B, 580 B; Gorg. 463 E, 513 B; infra , 198 C.

185 C Has the hiccoughs: Cf. schol., p. 257. There is a German essay,
“Uber den \vyi ; des Aristophanes.”

185 D The physician Eryximachus: Apelt, Aufsatze, p. 78, presses the
etymology, “Schlucksenbekampfer,” and says nobody noticed it!

186 Generalizes love: For the generalization cf. Unity , p. 64, n. 500.

187 A Like the harmony of a bow: Cf. on Rep. 439 B (Loeb). Cf. Hera-
cleit., frag. 51; Diels, I3, 87.

187 D Music in education: Cf. Prot. 326 B; Laws 653 ff.

187 E-188 A Suppress the bad: The bad is generalized as 7r\eove^ia. Cf.
Laws 906 C; Rep. 444 D; and Rep. 563 E.

189 A By such a convulsion: Cf. Tim. 88-89; Laws 790 C-791 C. Cf. Mil-
ton, Paradise Regained , IV, “And harmless if not wholesome as a sneeze / To
man’s less universe.”

SYMPOSIUM— NOTES

545

189 D A Rabelaisian myth : Cf. Gargantua, I, 8. Aristophanes’ speech is
sometimes said to be a parody of Empedocles. Cf. Emped. (Diels, I3, 247).

193 A Arcadian union was divided : Ritter, I, 201, says the word 8ux)kl<t-
Ori/xev cannot be used in Wilamowitz’ sense for dissolution of Arcadian Bund in
418, and therefore must refer to an event that took place in 385 or 384. This
event was the destruction of Mantinea by the Spartans under Agesipolis and
the dispersion of its inhabitants in villages (Xen. Hell. V. 2. 1-7; Diod. XV. 5;
Isoc. IV. 126; VIII. 100).

191 D Impossibly complete reunion: Ficino’s introduction to the Ion
makes unity the function of all four forms of madness; cf. Phaedr. 244-45.

Cf. Lucret. IV. 1 1 10; Paulus Silentarius, Anth. Pal ., V, 255; Victor Cousin’s
eloquent diatribe, Cours de 1819-20, apud Janet, Revue des deux mondes ,
LXI (1884), 319; Diderot, (Euvres , II, 293; Emerson:

As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,

Then runs into a wave again,

So lovers melt their sundered selves,

Yet melted would be twain.

Shakes., King John, II, 2:

And she, a fair divided excellence
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.

Tennyson, In Mem., LXXXV:

I the divided half of such
A friendship as had mastered time.

Some modern interpreters regard Aristophanes’ speech as the best thing
in the Symposium. Cf. Abel Herman t, Revue des deux mondes , April 1, 1930.

194 Eff. Polyphonic prose: Cf. Norden, Logos und RJiythmus , p. 14. Cf.
supra on 185 C.

195 A Topics: Praise first the nature and then the gifts: Cf. 199 C 5 where
ep7a = 66crets here.

196 C 5 Temperate: Anticipating the method of later encomiasts, Aga-
thon attributes the four cardinal virtues to the object of his praise. Cf. Rep.
427 E and on Laws 631 CD. Cf. W. C. France, Chicago diss. on Julian , chap,
i. Cf. Th. C. Burgess, Epideictic Literature , p. 133.

195 AB Brings like a7id like together: Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , p.
221. Cf. Lysis 214.

195 E Iyj 7nens hearts: Cf. Shelley, Adonais , stanza XXIV, “And human
hearts which to her aery tread / Yielding not, etc.”

197 An after-dinner speech: As Agathon implies (197 E 7). Cf. Hermog-
enes in Spengel, RJiet. Graec. II, 363.

196 C Ratify voluntary co7itracts: Cf. Crito 49 E and Shorey, Class. Jour.,
II (1906-7), 80-81. “The laws rulers of the city” is a latent quotation from
Alcidamas. Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1406 a 18. Cf. [Demosth.] XLII. 12, LVI. 2.

196 D Ares couldn't resist him: Latent quotation, Sophocles, frag. 23
(Nauck).

196 E Makes everyone a poet: Cf. Eurip. Stheneboea ; Nauck, frag. 666.

546

WHAT PLATO SAID

196 E Teach what he does not know: Cf. on Meno 99 B; Pindar 01. VIII.
59. For the idea that love educates cf. Eurip., frag. 889.

197 B Lord of gods and ?nen: Latent quotation. Cf. Voltaire, Poesies me¬
lees XI:

Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre,

II Test, le fut ou le doit £tre.

For the power of love cf. also Eurip. Hippol. 447 ff. Cf. commentators on
Lucret. I. 1 ff. and Drinkwater:

Lord of the host of deep desires
That spare no sting, yet are to me
Sole echo of the silver choirs
Whose dwelling is eternity.

With all save thee my soul is pressed
In high dispute from day to day,

But, love, at thy most high behest
I make no answer and obey.

Surpassed by the speech of Socrates: Cf. Rep. X; supra , p. 248; and Gorg.
480 ff.; supra , p. 140.

198 D False or true: Cf. contra Isoc. Busiris 4; Menex. 234 E-235 A. Cf.
on Hipp. Maj. 28 6 C. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan viii, “In orations of praise
and in invectives, the fancy is predominant, because the design is not truth.”

198D-199AB Can only tell the truth: Cf. Apol. 17 BC; Ion 532 DE;
Hipp. Maj. 288 D.

199 A His mind did not: A parody of the famous Euripidean line, Hippol.
612. Cf. Aristoph. Frogs 101-2, 1471. For 199 A 4, promising in ignorance,
cf. Crito 52 E.

201 Agathon is compelled: Taylor mistakenly thinks he is angered, piqued,
irritated. Cf. Robin, “mauvaise humeur d'Agathon eclate comme celle de
Callicles, Gorg. 505 C.”

201 B Did not know what he was saying: Cf. other cases where interlocu¬
tor is baffled: Ale. I 127 D; Lysis 216 C, Rep. I. 334 B (Loeb); Euthyph.
11 B; Meno 80 AB. Cf. Xen. Mem. IV. 2. 23 and 39.

201 E Diotima: Cf. the use of a supposed third person (ns) for courtesy,
on Hipp. Maj. 286 E. Cf. Friedliinder, II, 312; I, 173 and note, 175. Cf.
Frutiger, Les mythes de Platon , p. 113, “Diotime ... personnage fictif, quoi
qu’en pense Taylor (Plato, p. 224) ... est le porte-parole de Platon pour l’ex-
pose d’idees qui ne pouvaient etre attributes directement a Socrate, parce
qu’elles lui etaient trop manifestement etrangeres”; Taylor, p. 225, “We shall
not go wrong by treating the speech of Diotima as a speech of Socrates”;
Wilamowitz contra.

Inflicting a lesson in logic: The not-beautiful is not the ugly; the not-good
is not bad (202 B 1-2). And so the fact that love is not beautiful or good
does not make him ugly or bad, but something intermediate. Cf. on Lysis
216 C and Soph. 257 B-D.

202 E But a demon: The doctrine of demons throughout Plato is con¬
scious poetic and edifying allegory. Cf. Phacdo 107 D, 113 D; Rep. 617 E;

SYMPOSIUM— NOTES

547

Phaedr. 240 AB; Laws 729 E; Polit. 271 D; Laws 906 A, 713 D; Rep. 540 C;
Tim. 90 A, 40 D, etc. The story of its blending with Greek mythical tradition
and its transformation into a more or less seriously believed superstition would
fill a long chapter in the history of Platonism. Typical is the reckless state¬
ment in Apuleius De deo Soc. VI: “Per hos eosdem ut Plato in Symposio
autumat, cuncta denuntiata, et magorum varia miracula omnesque praesagio-
rum species reguntur.” Cf. Shorey on Horace Odes III. 17. 14; L. Robin, La
theorie platonicienne de V amour , pp. 131-38; J. A. Hild, Etude sur les demons
dans la litterature et la religion des grecs (Paris, 1880). Cf. also on Phaedo

11 3 D-

202 E Interpreter : Cf. Tennyson, Princess:

No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise,

Interpreter between the gods and men.

Eurip., frag. 271, uses deov and da'ipwv of love in two successive lines.

The alleged contradiction with Phaedr. 242 D (cf. 243 D, 257 A), may be
removed by pressing the alternative “a god or something divine” in the
Phaedrus , but it is uncritical to demand literal consistency in allegories.

203 B f. Interpolated myth: Cf. Zeller, pp. 611-12.

203 B Poros , resource: Rather than “plenty.”

203 B The birth of Aphrodite: Cf. Milton’s imitation in L Allegro:

Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-maying, etc.

The Christians took it as the Garden of Eden. Plutarch, Plotinus, and other
neo-Platonists offered various interpretations. Cf. Rabelais, IV, 57.

203-4 False conceit of knowledge: I.e., apaOia. Cf. on Lysis 218 AB. Cf.
Phileb. 48-49; Laws 689 A, 863 C, 732 A; Ale. I 117 f.; Apol. 21 CD, 23 C,
29 AB; Charm. 171 DE; Meno 84 C; Soph. 229 C, 230 A; Xen. Mem. III.
ix. 6.

204 A 5 Self-sufficiency of self -content: itcavov. Cf. Rep. 504 C.

205 E For the other half: Cf. supra , 192 E, the speech of Aristophanes.

204 C With thebeloved: epoipevov. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1159 a 27. Cf. Aris¬
totle’s famous KiveC 5k cos kpwpevov, Met. 7. 1072 b 3.

205 B Specialized “ poiesis ”: Cf. the definition of iroirjTLKr} in Soph. 219
B. Cf. supra 197 A.

205 D Lure of love for every creature: Cf. Eurip. Androm. 368, frag. 660.
Cf. Boethius III. c. 1, § 2, p. 53, “Nam quod quisque prae ceteris petit id
summum esse iudicat bonum”; II. c. 3, § 4, p. 34 (?).

205 E-206 A Our own: Cf. Charm. 163 D and Lysis 221 E, of which
this is only an apparent contradiction.

206 A 6 and 9 Be eternally ours: Euthyd. 280 passes from elvat to use,
disregarding aeL. Here Plato develops act, disregarding use.

206 C-E Immortality by succession: This need not be taken as a denial
of the immortality of the soul affirmed in the Phaedo. It may refer only to the
impossibility of immortality on earth for a creature composed of soul and
body. Cf. infra on 212 A.

548

WHAT PLATO SAID

206 BC The ugly repels it: This particular thought does not occur in the
Lysis or Phaedrus. What of it?

206 D 2 Birth-goddess of generation: For this conjunction cf. Pindar Nem.
VII. 1, and Matthew Arnold:

He does well too who keeps the clue the mild
Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave.

The word KaWovrj is perhaps Plato’s invention.

206 E, 207 D, 208 B Conditions of mortal existence withhold: This idea
greatly impressed Aristotle. It was often repeated in the Middle Ages and
has become a commonplace. Cf. Ar. De gen. et cor. 336 b 26-34; De an. 415 a
28, 416 b 24. Cf. Ross, Aristotle , pp. 107, 135, 185; Boethius III, § n. Cf.
Laws 721 BC, 773 E, 776 B. Cf. Rabelais, II, 8 init. Cf. Lowell, Poems, IV,
12, “By repetition keep our fickle permanence,” and Emerson’s “organs of
reproduction that lay hold on immortality.”

208 A Not a fixed thing: Cf. Theaet. 156-57; Tim. 51 A ff. James, Psy¬
chology, I, 371.

207 B Even in animals: Plato approaches the idea of instinct here.

209 DE These are my children: Cf. Swinburne, Erechtheus , vs. 582:

Children thou shalt bear to memory
That to man shalt bring forth none.

Cf. Phaedr. 278 AB; the \6yoi are his genuine sons.

207 D, 208 E Last infirmity of noble minds: Plato does not quite anticipate
this familiar quotation. Cf. Mrs. W. C. Wright, Julian , note on 96 C (Loeb).
Cf. Simplic. on Epictet. Man. 33. 9. Cf. Tac. Hist. IV. 5. 6 with Wendland in
Hermes , LI (1916), 481-85. The saying is attributed to Plato as an illustra¬
tion of his own 0i\o5o£ia, Athen. 507 D, with commentators, and Fronto (p.
145 [Naber]). Cf. Milton’s “last infirmity of noble minds” and Chamfort,
“La gloire, e’est la derniere passion du sage; e’est la chemise de l’ame ... ah!
je reconnais Montaigne.”

208-9 Love of fame: Subjective immortality. Cf. Isoc. 2. 3, Demon. 38,
Phil. 134, To Nic. 37, Panath. 260; Eurip. Here. fur. 357-58, frag. 734. Cf.
Plato Ep. II. 31 1 CD. Cf. Tyrtaeus, frag. 12, line 32, Edmonds, Elegy and
Iambus (Loeb); Bacchylides III. 92; Theognis 237 ff. Wilamowitz (II, 360)
completely misunderstands and emends 208 C.

209 A Inventive craftsmen: A faint hint of Virgil’s inventors, “Aut qui
vitam excoluere per artes” (Aen. VI. 663).

210-11 Eternally the same: This poetical rhetoric has given rise to the
foolish fancy that Plato first “discovered” one idea, the idea of beauty, and
later “discovered” other ideas. Cf. on Parmen. 130 CD, Unity , pp. 35-36.
The passage has also been taken more plausibly as an anticipation or equiva¬
lent of the idea of good and as a hymn to the unknown god. The Platonists
of the revival of learning often praised it.

212 A Confers upon him immortality: Cf. Frutiger, p. 142. Cf. Arnold,
God and the Bible , pp. 340-41; Sir J. G. Frazer, The Growth of Plato's Ideal
Theory , p. 53.

PHAEDRUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, pp. 155-224.

Barwick, C., De Platonis “Phaedri” temporibus” Diss. Philol. Hal.,” X, Part
I (1913). Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil., X (1915), 230.

Bruns, Ivo, “Attische Liebestheorien und die zeitliche Folge des Plat. Phai-
dros sowie der beiden Symposien ,” Neue Jahrb., V (1900), 17-37.
Diesendruck, Z ., Struktur und Char akter des Plat. “ Phaidros .” Leipzig, 1927.

Cf. Shorey’s review, Class. Phil., XXIII (1928), 79-80.

Friedlander, II, 485-504.

Gomperz, III, 16-29.

Grote, III, 1-55 (with the Symposium).

Immisch, O., “Neue YVege d. Platonforschung,” Neue Jahrb., XXXV (1915),
545-72.

Mras, K., Platos “Phaedrus” und die Rhetorik, “Wien. Studien,” XXXVI

(i9x4), 295“3I9*

Natorp, pp. 53-89.

Parmentier, L., “L’age de Phedre dans le dialogue de Platon,” Bull. Assoc .

G . Bude, No. 10 (1926), pp. 8-21.

POHLENZ, pp. 326-64.

Raeder, pp. 245-79.

Ritter, II, 39-62.

- , “Die Abfassungszeit des Phadrus, Philologus , LXXIII (1914), 321 ff.

Rudberg, G., Kring Platons “Phaidros.” Goteborg, 1924. Cf. Shorey’s re¬
view, Class. Phil., XX (1925), 77-80.

Shorey, Unity, pp. 71-74.

Taylor, pp. 299-319.

Tumarkin, A., “Die Einheit des Platonischen Phaedrus” Neue Jahrb. f. Wiss.
und Jugendbildung, I (1925), 17-31.

Vahlen, J., Ueber die Rede des Lysias in Platos “Phadrus ” “Sitz. Ber. der
Berl. Akad.” (1903), pp. 788-816.

Verdam, H. D., “Quo tempore Phaedrus Platonicus scriptus sit,” Mnem.,
XLVI (1918), 383-402.

Weinstock, H., De erotico Lysiaco. Munster, 1912.

Wilamowitz, I, 450-88.

Zeller, pp. 535-44; 491, i; 498, 4; 518 f.; 572 ff. and passim.

NOTES

The Phaedrus was once uncritically supposed to be Plato’s earliest dialogue
(cf. Diog.L. III.38; Olympiod. Vit. Plat. Ill [Hermann VI, p. 192]. Prolegomena
XXIV. 217, ibid.) It is generally dated about the time of the Republic or a

549

55°

WHAT PLATO SAID

little later. Cf. Unity , pp. 71-72; C. Ritter, Philologus, IXXlll (1914), 321 flf.
There is an enormous and inconclusive literature on the subject (cf. Ueberw.-
Pr., pp. 81-82*; C. Ritter, Platons Dialog “ Phaidros ” ubersetzt und erlautert
[Leipzig, 1922], pp. 27-28). The dramatic date may be plausibly set between
41 1 (Polemarchus’ return from Thurii to Athens) and 404-403 (his death).
But it is quite idle to try to fit everything said about Isocrates or Athens to
that assumption. Plato is not so scrupulous. Cf. supra , p. 540.

Sequence and unity : The extensive literature on the composition of the
Phaedrus sometimes seems to confuse the question of its unity as a work of art
(264 C, 268 B flf.) with that of the existence of a plausible connection of transi¬
tion in thought between the topics of love and rhetoric. Fanciful perhaps is
the discovery of the unity in the absolute identification of Eros with philos¬
ophy or dialectics, or even with Socrates, Zeller, pp. 609-14, Friedlander I,
202; cf. Symp. 203 CD.

229 A Ilissus: Cf. Frazer, Pausanias , II, 201, 203; Wilamowitz, I, 451;
Athenische Mittheilungen , XXXVII, 141; Judeich, Topog. von A then ^ p. 416.

229 B Carried off Oreithyia: We are now told that she was the summer
breeze driven away by Boreas.

229 C Rationalizing: Cf. the Chicago dissertation of Mrs. Anne Bates
Hersman, Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation. Cf. Rep. 378 (Loeb);
Cic. De. nat. deor. III. 24.

229 D 6 Chimaeras dire: Cf. A. Lang, Myth , Ritual and Religion , p. 75:
“The Chimaera, a composite creature, lion, goat, and serpent, might repre¬
sent, Lafitau thought, a league of three totem tribes, just as wolf, bear, and
turtle represented the Iroquois league.”

230 A 4 and 6 Typhon: arixfrov poLpas anticipates the later Cynic and Stoic
use of tu<£os, Milton’s “fume.”

230 A 6 Participant in the grace of God: Cf. Prot. 322 A, Crit. 121 A, and
on Meno 99 E. For the implication that there is something divine in man cf.
also Rep. 366 C, 501 B, 589 D 1, 61 1 E; Tim. 42 A i; Laws 691 E, 7 66 A 3,
906 B. Cf. further Arnobius Adv. Gent. II. 7; Tertullian De an. c. XVII; Ma-
mertus Claudianus (Migne 53), pp. 746-77.

230 E Commentators: For the literature and opinions to 19 14 cf. Hazel L.
Brown, Extemporary Speech in Antiquity (Chicago diss.), p. 17. Cf. also H.
Weinstock, De erotico Lysiaco , p. 34, nn. 1 and 2; Gomperz, III, 16. Blass
(. Hermes XXXVI, 580) tries to “prove” the speech Plato’s by the rhythm.
Cf. W. Aly, “Anytos der Anklager des Sokrates,” Neuejahrb ., XXXI, 1913,
P- 174.

234 CD Expression: rots ovopaa iv. Infra , 257 A; cf. Apol. 17 C 2; Hipp.
Maj. 286 A; Symp. 198 B, 199 B, Euthyd. 304 E 6.

235 C Inspired: Cf. Emerson, The Poet: “A certain poet described it to
me thus”; Meno 81 A; Phaedo 117 E; Gorg. 493 A; Rep. 583 B, 617 D.

236 DE Obvious and indispensable topics: Cf. Isocrates’ boast, Against
the Sophists 12-13; Helena 15. Cf. Hamlet , III, 2: “Some necessary question
of the play.”

237 C Systematically: The influence of lover and non-lover on mind, body
and possessions is considered (239-40). For the three cf. on Laws 697 B.

PHAEDRUS— NOTES

55 1

237 E The definition: As starting-point. Cf. 237 D 1. Cf. on Laches
190 B. Plato calls attention to this in 263 D. Cf. also 259 E, 265 D. It is
one of the points of the Platonic philosophy that most influenced Cicero. Cf.
Hermias in Plat. Phaedr. Schol. (Couvreur), p. 50,1. 20, 7rpo yap rod tto'iov rl

6<TTL TO TL €(TTl f TJTTJT60V .

237~3& Conflict of passion and reason in the soul: Cf. Laws 644 CD, 863 E;
Soph. 228 BC; Phaedo 99 A; Rep. 439 B (Loeb); Arnold, Lit. and Dogma ,
chap. VII, p. 187.

243 C From brutal sailors: Cf. Stallb. ad loc.; Laws 704DAF.; Cic. De
rep. II. c. 3-4.

243 D Washed the bitter brine of impiety: Cf. Minucius Felix XVI. 1, “ut
conuiciorum amarissimam labem verborum veracium flumine diluamus.” Cf.
my note in English Class. Rev., XVIII, 302 f.; Eurip. Hippol. 653-54; Cic.
Nat. deor. II. 7.

244 B 2 Sibyl: Cf. Schol. (Hermann), p. 269; Warde Fowler, Roman Re¬
ligious Experience , p. 258; Heraclit., frag. 92 (Diels I3, 96).

244-45 Four kinds of inspired ?nadness: Cf. Texte: Etudes de lit. Euro-
peenne , pp. 45-46.

Orgiastic: i.e. Bacchic. Cf. Eurip. Bacchae 299, 305.

245 A Madness of the poet: Cf. Ion 534 A 4; Democritus apud Cic. De div.
1,37; Horace A.P. 296. Cf. Shakes., A Midsummer-Night1 s Dream, V, i, 7, “The
lunatic, the lover and the poet”; E. E. Sikes, The Greek View of Poetry , p. 19;
KroW,Studien,c\\. II,“DasdichterischeSchaffen,”p.25; Delacroix, Psychologie
de l1 art, p. 338, “La parente de I’extase religieuse et de l’extase artistique.” Cf.
the philosophic madness, Sy?np. 218 B; infra, 249 CD. On the myth cf. Fru-
tiger, Mythes de Platon , pp. 1 1 2 fF. ; Burnet, Greek Philosophy, p. 65, “. . . .
The well-known proem, in which Parmenides describes his ascent to the home
of the goddess, .... is a reflection of the conventional ascents into heaven
.... in the apocalyptic literature of those days, and of which we have later
imitations in the myth of Plato’s Phaedrus and in Dante’s Paradiso11

245 A 2 Virgin: Lit., “untrodden.” Cf. the transfer of the epithet in Lu¬
cretius’ “avia Pieridum peragro.” The tone of the whole passage is nearer that
of Ion 533-34, than of Rep. 599-602, which illustrates the unimportance of
the “chronology” of the dialogues.

245 C 2 The clever will disbelieve it, the wise will believe: Cf. Phileb. 29 A 3.
This is in the tone of the Laws. Cf., e.g., 887 E, 899 C, 907 C. Cf. Isoc.
Panath. 17 6. Wilamowitz (II, 271) misses the point. Cf. Unity , p. 73.

245 C 9 Principle of r notion : Cf. Laws 895; Thcaet. 153 D; Ar. Met. 983 a
30, 984 a 27; Phys. 192 b 14; Degen. anim. 715 a 7, 729 a 10, 716 a 6, 740 b 25;
Meteorol. 390 b 19. But cf. De an. 403 b 30: They thought what did not move
itself could not move others; and 406 a 3-4, 408 b 4. Hooker, Eccles. Pol.
III. 8, “I will therefore myself also use the sentence .... of Plato pronounc¬
ing every soul immortal.” Cicero uses this proof of immortality twice: Tusc .
1.1.23, S3; Rep. VI. 2$.

246 B A charioteer: Cf. Isoc. I. 32. Plato’s description of the two steeds
may be compared with Shakespeare’s in Venus and Adonis. It has been taken

WHAT PLATO SAID

552

as evidence that he was interested in horses. Cf. infra, 253-54. Cf. the two
steeds of Patroclus (//. XVI. 154).

246 B The other unruly (, appetite ): The steeds and the charioteer are an
obvious allegory of the tripartite soul of Rep . 435-41. It cannot be proved
that this “must” precede or “must” follow the Republic . Cf. Tim . 72 D and
on Phaedo 68 C. It is uncritical to raise objections by pressing the details of
the picture and arguing, e.g., that the horses ought not to see the ideas, that
the horses of the gods are both good, or that it is the thumos and could not be
the good horse that is a friend of right opinion! Cf. 253 D 7 with Rep. 440 B
(Loeb). Cf. however, Natorp, “Metakritischer Anhang,” op. cit ., p. 527.

246 B 6 All soul: Cf. 245 C 5 and Frutiger, pp. 13 1 ff.

246 CD Immortal animal: For god an animal cf. on Euthydem. 302 DE.
Sextus Empiricus ado. math. IX. 138 ff. develops the difficulties arising from
the idea of god as $&ov.

246 CD Soul and body conjoined forever: Some critics have taken this as
a declaration of faith, but the Arnoldian or Lucianic irony forbids that. Cf.
God and the Bible , p. 35; also ibid., p. 93. Cf. Tim. 40 DE; Laws 983 B 2.

246 E Fares forth .... the mighty leader , Zeus: Frequently quoted by
later writers. Cf., e.g., Athenagoras , ed. March, pp. 36-37.

247 A Of the twelve gods: For twelve gods cf. Laws 828 BC; Ficino, “Sci¬
licet animam mundi quam nominat Jovem atque sub ea duodecim animas
sphaerarum.” Cf. Mrs. Browning, The Dead Pan , “Oh, twelve gods of Plato's
vision, etc.” Cf. Stewart, Myths of Plato , p. 354. Cf. Dante, Convivio , II, 4,
with J. L. E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler ,
pp. 235-39; Milton, Par. Lost , III:

.... passed the planets seven and passed the fix’d
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talk’d and that first moved.

The conjectural relations of the twelve gods, and particularly Hestia, to
Platonic or Pythagorean astronomy belong to the technical study of Plato's
astronomy. Cf. Ritter, n. 57, in the Apelt Plato , Vol. II.

247 A 6 Minding his own appointed task: Cf. on Charm. 161 B; Goethe,
“Wie das Gestirn / OhneHast, / Aber ohneRast, / Drehe sich jeder / urn die
eigne Last.”

247 A 7 Envy has no place in the choir divine: Cf. Tim. 29 E 2. Laws 731
A3; Menex. 238 A; Pseudo-Phocylidea 71, a^dovoi oopavidai, etc. Goethe:
“Auf’m Neidpfad habt ihr mich nicht getroffen.” Boethius III. c. 9. 6, “For¬
ma boni livore carens”; Dante, Par., VII, 64.

For a similar exclusion cf. Aesch. Eumen. 350-52.

250 A 2 Less: With (3paxeus cf. the irony of Tim . 51 E 6.

247 C What no poet has sung: Cf. Lawsy^j E-754 A, 722 E; Menex. 139 C;
Polit. 269 C; Rep. 366 E; Tim. on elements 48 B; Symp. 178 B; Phaedo 108 C.
For misinterpretations cf. Unity , pp. 73-74.

248 BC Law of Adrasteia: Cf. Rep. 451 A (Loeb) ; Complete Poems of Hen¬
ry More , p. 120:

And upward goes if she be not debar’d
By Adrastias law nor strength empar’d
By too long bondage, in this Cave below.

PHAEDRUS— NOTES

553

248 CD Is borne down : With different imagery the thought resembles
Phaedo 81 CD. There was much later and neo-Platonic speculation on the
cause of the “fall” of the soul. There is of course no contradiction with Tim.
42 A.

248 DE Ranks of men: Cf. also Rep. 619-20; Phaedo 1 13 D-i 14 C, where
likewise the philosopher has the highest rank. Cf. Gorg. 526 C. For the hu¬
morous scale of values, cf. Tim. 91 D. Cf. also perhaps the list in Phileb.
65-66. Cf. Friedliinder, I, 225.

248 E Ninth a tyrant : Cf. Rep. IX. 571 ff., 615 D; Gorg. 525 DE.

249 C 6 Makes God divine: Or, reading Oeos, makes God God. Cf. Ar.
Eth. X. 1 177 a 1 5, 21, 1 177 b 22, 1 179 a 23 ff.; Met. 1072 b 24-25.

250 B Embodiment: Cf. the girl in Boccaccio, apud Symonds Ital. Lit.
1. 1 19: “Colui che muove il ciel.... mi fece a suo diletto.... per dar qua giu....
alcun segno di quella belta che sempre a lui sta nel cospetto.”

250 D What passion would she inspire: This is often misquoted, some
other idea being substituted for wisdom. Cf. my note in Class. Phil., XXVII,
280-82; Rabelais, II, XVIII, quotes it correctly. Cf. Cic. Be offic. I. 5.

250_5I Yearning for the ideal: Cf. the differing generalizations of love in
the Symp. 186, 205 D ff.

251 Mingle jest with earnest: Cf. 277 E. A characteristic feature of Pla¬
to's style. Cf. apologists for Ep. VI. 323 D. And for the phrase cf. Rep. 452 E;
Symp. 197 E 7; Laws 688 B, 761 D; Epin. 992 B 3; Ep. VI. 323 D 2; Josef
Martin, Symposion , pp. 2 and 6; and the collection of passages in Ritter,
Gesetze Kommentar, pp. 17 ff.

Ancient critics: Cf. Fr. Walsdorff, Die antiken Urteile iiber Platons Stil ,
“Klassisch-philologischeStudien,” hrg. v. C. Jensen (Leipzig, 1927), Heft 1.

251 A Careless of all human respects: Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 3. 1 1 ; Lucret. IV.
1 121-32; Anon. Par. apud WTilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides , p. 174; Dun¬
bar, The Merle and the Nightingale:

.... from them gone
Fame, goods and strength, wherefore will say I dare
All love is lost but upon God alone.

251 CDE, 255 C “ Relaxing the solids of the whole system Burke’s words
{Sublime and Beautiful) give Plato’s meaning fairly. A literal translation
would not convey it.

252 B And immortals Pteros: Cf. Cratyl. 391 E 5. The verse has been con¬
jectured to be Orphic.

252 DE To mold the beloved: Cf. Symp. 209 BC; Lysis 206 C 6 ff . It is a
plausible fancy that Plato is thinking of Dion. Cf. Ep. VII. 327 A, 328 B,
335 E> 35 1 A, 351 DE-

255 DE Anteros: Cf. Frazer, Pausanias, II, 391.

253~54 The unruly steed: Plato inserts here a description of the two steeds.
Cf. supra on 246 B.

257 A For nine thousand years: Cf. supra, 248 E-249 A; on Rep. 615 A-C
(Loeb); Zeller, p. 81 1, n. 4.

257 C Recently taunted him: Supposed to refer to Archinos’ opposition to
Thrasybulus’ proposal in 403 to grant citizenship to Lysias. Cf. Unity, p. 72.

WHAT PLATO SAID

554

257 C 6 Scribbler of words: Logographos meant both speech-writer and
pre-LIerodotean historian.

260 BC An ass a war-horse: Cf. Diog. L. VI. 8; Tennyson, Locksley Hall
Sixty Years After , “Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the
cat.”

261 A8 Influence: Itisakindofi/'uxaY^Ytaorguidanceofsouls27i C 10.
(Cf. Cic. De or. I. 5. Isocrates uses il/vxayojyeLV rather in the sense of entertain
(2. 49). Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., VI, 1 10. In Laws 909 B 2 Plato plays with
the superstitious meaning of the word.

261 D 6 Eleatic Palamedes: Obviously Zeno. Cf. Diog. L. IX. 25; Par-
men ., passim and 148 A. With 261 D 8 and 261 E7 cf. also Soph. 259 D,
231 A and Ar. Topics 108 a 4, 100 a 18 ff., Ethics 1129 a 27; Schopenhauer,
Welt als Wille , I, 9.

264 B Right valiantly: Ironical as Gorg. 492 D. Hermogenes (Spengel, II,
331) misunderstands it. The striking phrase “logographic necessity” is mis¬
understood by Butcher, Harvard Lectures , p. 182.

264 D Midas: Cf. Diog. L. I. 89; Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus (Loeb), I,

I58-

The inscription may be roughly rendered:

I am a maiden of brass, I lie on the tomb of Midas;

While the waters flow and the tall trees grow,

I still rest here on his woeful bier.

I say unto all that pass, Here lies buried Midas.

Cf. Ben Jonson’s feeble imitation of the motif:

Where is the man that never yet did hear
Of chaste Penelope, Ulysses’ queen?

265 B Dialecticians: The feigned introduction of the word as new proves
nothing. Cf. Unity , p. 74, and on Charm. 155 A.

265 D-266 C Divide: Cf. 277 B, 263 B, and on Phileb. 16 D ff., and for
the association of it with the problem of the one and the many (2 66 B 5; cf.
249 C 1) cf. ibid. 16 C 9 ff., 18 C; Parmen. 132 A 3; Laws 965 C 2. It is es¬
sentially the “later” method of the Sophist and Politicus. Cf. Unity, p.51,
n. 377.

267-68 Technicalities: Cf. Cic. De or. I. 19. Cf. Shorey in Quart, four .
Speech Education, April, 1922, p. 114.

268 B Occasion: Cf. 272 A 4, naipovs. Cf. Isoc. Soph. 16; Antid. 139, 184,
and passim; Ar. Eth. 1137 a 15, Epict. III. 21. 19-20.

268 D 5 Harmonious whole: Cf. 264 C; every logos should have the unity
of a living organism. Cf. Polit. 277 BC and by implication Phileb. 64 B; Ar.
Poetics 1459 a 20; Horace AP 1 ff.; Lowell, Fable for Critics:

Now it isn’t one thing nor another alone
Makes a poem but rather the general tone, etc.

269 A Ability, science, and study: Cf. on Rep. 374 D (Loeb) with Shorey
in TAP A, Vol. XL (1909).

PHAEDRUS— NOTES

555

Pericles .... Anaxagoras: Cf. Isoc. Antid. 235; Ale. I 118 C; Emerson,
Culture: “The orator who has once seen things in their divine order .... will

come to affairs as from a higher ground . Plato says Pericles owed this

elevation to the lessons of Anaxagoras.”

Hippocrates and right reason: Cf. Th. Gomperz, “Die hippokratische Frage
undder AusgangspunktihrerL6sung,”P///7o/o^/J,LXX (1911), 213-41 (in his
Hellenika , II, 324-54); H. Schone, Deutsche medhinische W ochenschr. (1910),
Nos. 9 and 10, compares Phaedr. 270 C with Hippocr. Trepi apx- carp. 20: H.
Diels, Sitzungsher. Perl. Akad. (1910), pp. H4off.; W. Capelle, “Zur hippo-
kratischen Frage,” Hermes , LVII (1922), 247-65; E. Littre, CEuvres completes
d'Hippocrate , I, 295 ff.; M. Pohlenz, Hermes , LIII (1918), 405 ff.; W. Capelle,
op. cit ., argues against the Littre-Gomperz hypothesis that Phaedr. 270 C
refers to Trepi apx« tcirp. 20, and also against Pohlenz who maintains that the
author of this work is attacking Hippocrates. Cf. also F. E. Kind, Bursians
Jahresber ., CLXXX (1919), 6-8. Plato, of course, is only generalizing for his
own purposes “the method of Hippocrates.”

271 CD A scientific rhetoric: Aristotle's rhetoric is the execution of this
program.

For 271 D 6 cf. Emerson, Eloquence: “Eloquence is the power to translate
a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.”

271 E Recognize instantly: So in substance Isoc. Against Sophists 16. Cf.
the quickness of perception of Socrates in Phaedo 89 A.

274 C Theuth: Cf. Phileb. 18 B. It is not known where Plato found this
tale or whether he invented it. He attributes to Theuth as a culture hero
number, reckoning, geometry, and games. Cf. Aeschylus Prom. 436-506.

275 A Memory: Cf. Eurip. Palamedes , frag. 582 (Nauck), \tj6tjs t/mp/ia/d;
Diels3, 1 1 1. 2. As Mr. Aldous Huxley puts it, “We read so much that we have
lost the art of remembering.”

275 B Rebuked: 5e ye. Cf. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., IX: “I regard truth as a
divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the sounds are supposed
to proceed, if only the words are audible and intelligible.” For the Ruskinian
praise of the old-time simplicity that accepted truth from an “oak or a rock,”
275 B, cf. the tone of Laws 679 C, 881 A, 863 C 5, 885 C, 886 A, 887 D, and
on Charm. 161 BC.

275 I> ff- The written word': Cf. Croce, Logic as the Science of Pure
Concept , p. 316, “We are led to say, like Socrates in the Phaedrus , that
written discourses are like pictures and do not answer questions, but always
repeat what has already been said.” Already in Prot. 329 A. For the opposite
view that the written word can be re-read, cf. Laws 891 A but also 968 D E;
Parmen. 127 D; Phaedr. 262 D 8; Epin. 980 D 4. Ruskin, Kings' Treasuries ,
gives the idea another turn: “The living lord may assume courtesy, the living
philosopher explain his thought to you — but here we neither feign nor inter¬
pret.” Cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table:
“Writing .... is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader’s mind or
miss it; — but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if
it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can’t help hitting it.” Bur-

WHAT PLATO SAID

556

net (i Greek Philosophy , p. 1) wrongly says: “It was Plato’s belief, indeed,
that no philosophical truth could be communicated in writing at all; it was
only by some sort of immediate contact that one soul could kindle the flame
in another.” On this topic cf. Friedlander, I, 125 ff., 193, 127, and 131, where
he ignores Ivo Bruns’s theory that it is a Socratic not a Platonic idea. Gom-
perz, III, 22; Apelt, IV, 145. Cf. Isoc. To Philip 26; To Dionysius 2-3, with
Phaedr. 275 E. Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., XXVI (1931), 215-17. The silly sen¬
tence in Ep. II. 314 C, that there is no writing of Plato nor ever will be, but
that the writings which now bear his name belong to (a?) Socrates who has
become young and beautiful, has been the theme of endless unprofitable com¬
ment and conjecture.

276 A Adonis: Cf. Suidas, s.v.; Schol. Theocr. XV. 112; Raoul Rochette,
Revue archeologique , VIII (1852), 97-123; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie , etc.,
II, 780, 4; 821, 2; 971, 8; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, part IV, vol. I3, chap,
x, pp. 236-59; G. Greve, De Adonide, pp. 37-41.

277 D Writing a game: Ruskin and Renan, themselves great literary ar¬
tists, felt or affected to feel in the same way.

278 D Painfully composed: Cf. 228 A. Cf. Menex . 236 B. The tradition
that Plato revised his writings to the end is expressed in similar language. Cf.
Dionys. Hal. de comp, verb., p. 208, 11-209, 5 (Reiske).

279 BC Final prayer: Cf. Fitzgerald’s rendering apud Quiller-Couch, Art
of Reading, pp. 126-27. Cf. on Ale. II init. Selden, Table Talk, cx, 10:
“Prayer should be short without giving God Almighty reasons why he should
grant this or that. He knows best what is good for us.”

Wisdom wealth: Anticipates the Stoics. Cf. Rep. 547 B 5-6; Xen. Symp.

IV. 34.

REPUBLIC

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, J., The “ Republic ” of Plato. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1902.

Barker, E., Greek Political Theory: Plato and His Predecessors , pp. 145-268.

Burckhardt, G., Individuum und Allgemeinheit in Pl.s Politeiay “Abh. zur
Philosophic und ihrer Gesch.,,, herausgegeben von B. Erdmann. Vierzigstes
Heft. Halle, 1913.

Cornford, F. M., “Psychology and Social Structure in the Republic of Plato,”
Class. Quart., VI (1912), 246-65.

Dummler, F., “Zur Komp. d. Platon. Staates mit e. Exkurs iiber die Ent-
wickl. d. Platon. Psychologie,” Kl. Schr., I, 229-70.

Flach, J., Aristote dans sa critique du communisme de Platon, “Seances et
travaux de l’Acad. des Sciences Morales et Politiques,” CLXXVII (1912),

538-67.

Friedlander, II, 345-414.

Gomperz, III, 51-132.

Grote, IV, 1-214.

Guggenheim, M., “Studien zu Pl.s Idealstaat (Kynismus und Platonismus),”
Neue Jahrb., IX (1902), 521-39.

Hirmer, J., “Entstehung u. Komp. d. Platon. Politeia,,, Jahrb. f. kl. Philol .,
Supplementband , XXIII (1897), 579-678.

Jowett and Campbell, The “ Republic ” of Plato. 3 vols. Oxford, 1894. Cf.
Shorey’s review, Amer. Jour. Phil., XVI (1895), 223-39, and Nation, LXI
(1895), 82-84.

Klee, Raymond-Lucien, “La theorie et la pratique dans la cite platoni-
cienne,” Revue d'histoire de la philosophic, IV (1930), 309-53.

Natorp, pp. 1 79-22 1.

Nettleship, R. L., “The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato/’
Hellenica, ed. E. Abbott (1880), pp. 67-180; Lectures on the “ Republic ” of
Plato, ed. G. R. Benson (2d ed.). London, 1901.

Pohlenz, pp. 207-37.

Pohlmann, R., Gesch. d. sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken
Welt. Dritte x^uflage. Munchen, 1925.

Raeder, pp. 181-245.

Ritter, II, 3-39, 554-641, and passim.

- , Pl.s Staat, Darstellung des Inhalts. 1909.

Robert, C., “Aphoristische Bemerkungen zu den Ekklesiazusen des Aris¬
tophanes/’ Hermes, LVII (1922), 321-56.

Salin, E., Plato und die griech. Utopie. Leipzig und Munchen, 1921.

Shorey, P., The Idea of Good in Plato's “Republic” : A Study in the Logic of
Speculative Ethics, “Studies in Class. Phil.,” I (1895), 188-239.

557

558

WHAT PLATO SAID

Shorey, P., Plato: The “Republic.” With an English translation. Vol. I,
Books I-V. “The Loeb Class. Library Series.” New York, 1930.

- , “The Idea of Justice in Plato’s Republic” Ethical Record , II (1890),

i85-99-

- , “Some Ideals of Education in Plato’s Republic” Educational Bi-

Monthly , II (1908), 208-22.

- , Art. “Summum bonum” in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and

Ethics.

- , “Homer Iliad 24, 367 and Plato Republic 492 C,” Class. Phil., V

(1910), 220.

- , “The Meaning of Ku/cXos in Plato Rep. 424 A,” ibid., p. 505.

- , “Note on Plato Republic 368 A,” ibid., XII (1917), 436.

- , “Note on Plato Republic 565 A,” ibid., XV (1920), 300.

- , “Plato Republic 532 B,” Class. Rev., IV (1890), 480.

- , “Note on Plato Republic 566 E,” ibid., XIX (1905), 438-39.

- , “Note on Plato Republic 488 D,” Class. Rev., XX (1906), 247-48.

- , “Ideas and Numbers Again,” Class. Phil., XXII (1927), 213-18.

Taylor, pp. 263-98.

Wilamowitz, I, 393-449; II, 179-220.

Zeller, pp. 892-925 and passim.

The synopsis of the Republic is, I think, intelligible with or without the aid
of the marginal references. Economy of space compels me to refer readers
who look for more, especially on the last five books, to the notes on my trans¬
lation of the Republic in the “Loeb Series.”

NOTES

327 C Adeimantus: Adeimantus of the deme of Kollytos was the son of
Ariston and the brother of Plato ( Apol . 34 A, Diog. L. III. 4) and Glaucon.
He is also mentioned at the beginning of the Parmenides. According to Rep.
368 A, he distinguished himself at the battle of Megara (409 b.c.?), for which
cf. Diod. XIII. 65. Cf. Kirchner, Prosop. Att., No. 199; Zeller, II, 14, 392, n. 1.
331 C Is this then justice: He collects a definition as in Gorg. 453 A.

334 B Harm your enemies: Cf. 332 D, Meno 71 E and Xenophon passim.

335 C Make him unjust: Cf. Crito 44 D, Apol. 41 D. This in a sense begs
the whole question of the Republic. Cf. 352 E, 353 AB, 609 BC, and Loeb
ad loc.

336 A Ismenias: Cf. Meno 90 A; Apelt, Meno, p. 85; Thompson, Meno,
xl. ; Xen. Hell. III. v. 1, V. ii. 35-36; Plut. Pelopidas V. 3.

336 B Restrain himself longer: Cf. Gorg. 461 B (Polus), 481 B 5 (Callicles);
Charm. 162 C (Critias).

336 C Captious questions: Cf. 337 A; Gorg. 461 C, 483 A; and for com¬
plaints of Socrates cf. on Meno 80 A and Cleitophon passim.

Dramatic byplay: Thrasymachus asks what penalty he deserves for his
ignorance and Socrates characteristically replies, “The penalty of learning
from one who knows.” Cf. Crit. 106 B.

REPUBLIC— NOTES 559

338 C The superior — the stronger: Cf. on Gorg. 489 D; Laws 714 CfF.,
690 B, 890 A; infra , 367 C.

338 DE Its domination: Cf. infra, 488 DE; Laws 962 DE, 697 D, 757 D,
714 CD.

338 CD Stronger athlete: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1 106 b 3, “Too little for Milo.’*

343 C Other fellow s good: Cf. infra, 392 B; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1130 a 3, 1134
b5.

344 AB Successful tyrant: Cf. Gorg. 468 E ff.; infra, Book IX.

344 C Fear of suffering it: Cf. infra, 366 CD, 360 D; Gorg. 492 A, 483 B;
Prot. 327 B; Ar. Rhet. II. 23.

347 C City of good men: A seeming anticipation of the idea of the philo¬
sophic state. Cf. infra, 520 E-521 A. It is fanciful to argue that 347 A-348 B
or even 345 B-348 B “must” belong to Plato’s revision of the Thrasymachus
as an introduction to the Republic. Cf. supra, p. 3 and pp. 214-15.

348 C 9 Noble {yevvalav) : Cf. on Soph. 231 B.

348 C 9 Simplicity: With evrjdeiav cf. Laws 679 C; Phaedr. 275 B. For
fidiare, 348 C 7, cf. on Gorg. 491 E.

351 C Community of robbers: Cf. Huxley, Evol. and Eth., p. 56, “Wolves
could not hunt in packs except for the real though unexpressed [si cl] under¬
standing that they should not attack one another during the chase.” Cf. Cic.
De offic. II. 11.

351 E-352 A Individual and the state: Cf. infra, 369 A, 434 D, 441 C.

352 AB The gods: Cf. Ale. 1 134 D; Phileb. 39 E; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1179 a 24;
Democr., frag. 217 D. Cf. also 613 AB; Laws 716 CD; and Lysis 214 D.

354 B At every dish: Cf. Epict. Encheirid. 1 5.

A Thrasymachus: Cf. F. Diimmler, Kleine Schriften, I, 234-35; Schleier-
macher, Platons Werke (2d ed., 1817-26), III, 1, 7 ff.; C. Hermann, Gesch. u.
System d. Plat. Philos ., pp. 535 ff.; H. von Arnim, Platos Jugenddialoge, pp.
71 ff.; Friedliinder, II, 50 ff. (cf. esp. n. 1, p. 50) ; ibid., p. 345; Wilamowitz, I2,
209. Against this conjecture cf. Pohlenz, p. 209, n. 1 ; Taylor, p. 264; Verdam,
in Mnemosyne, LV (1927), 316.

366 D Weakness: Cf. Isoc. I. 38.

359 D ff. Ring of Gyges: Cf. Apelt, Review of Adam in Woch. f. klass.
Phil., 1903, pp. 337-50; Anon. Iambi., frag. 6 (Diels, II, 332); Cic. De offic.
II. 9; Rabelais, V, 8.

359 C The greed: Cf. on Laws 875 B 7.

362 A Crucified: Lit., “impaled.” Cf. Gorg. 473 C; Cic. De rep. III. 27.
This passage has often been compared with the crucifixion of Jesus.

361 AB Reputation for justice: Cf. Theaet. 176 B 6-7; Eurip. Helena 270,
Orest 236; Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, I, 186. With B 8 (Aesch. Septem 592)
cf. Gorg . 527 B.

362 CD Buy off the gods: Cf. infra, 364 D, 365 E; Laws 885 D, 906 B-
907 B; Eurip. Medea 964.

363 CD Eternal drunk: Cf. Lewis, Time and Western Man, p. 1 1 2 ; Ar¬
nold, Lit. and Dogma, p. 340.

364 CD But painful: He quotes Hesiod Works 287-89. Cf. Laws 718 E;
Prot. 340 D.

WHAT PLATO SAID

560

365 AB Clever youth: Cf. Unity , p. 5; Xen. Mem. II. 1. 21.

366 A Buy out the law: Cf. Hamlet , III, 3, “The wicked prize itself/Buys
out the law.”

365 DE Concern himself with them: Cf. Laws 899 D 5 ff., 902 B ff., 885
B 8, 888 C 5, 948 C. Cf. per contra Arnold, The Better Part:

Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see?

More strictly then the inward judge obey!

Ruskin, Pref. to A Crown of Wild Olive, and Marcus Aurelius, passim.

367 DE Given his life: Cf. Crito 45 D 8, where Crito seems to use the
phrase mechanically for his purpose.

369 A Idea: Perhaps rather “aspect.” The theory of ideas was developed
before the Republic and it is idle to look for different stages of its development
there. Throughout the dialogues Plato uses the word as the context may de¬
termine, in its earlier loose, its logical, or its metaphysical sense. Cf. infra,
402 C, 476 A, 479, 507 B, 509 ff., 596 A ff.; cf. on Euthyph. 6 D; on Polit.
263 B and 277 D; Parmen. 130 CD, 130 B; Soph. 250 B; Phileb. 15 B, 16 D,
56 DE, 62 A, 59 A, 59 C; Tim. 51 CD; Laws 966 AB (?). Cf. also Cratyl.
389 C with Rep. 500 D 4, Cratyl. 440 B, Phaedr. 247 C, 250 B-D, Phaedo
78-80, Symp. 21 1 A-D, Euthydem. 301 A, Unity , pp. 27-40.

369 A Exemplify: Cf. Soph. 226 C 2 and on Polit. 277 D. There is no
contradiction.

372 D Acorn-eating“pigs” : Cf. Laws 819 D and on 807 A. For the “sim¬
ple life” cf. Laws 678-79; Polit. 272; Friedliinder, II, 362.

369 B Helplessness of solitary man: Cf. Thomas Payne, “Society is pro¬
duced by our wants and governed by our wickedness”; and Hooker, Eccles.
Pol., i. 10.

370 D Toolwrights: Cf. Polit. 281 E.

371 B f. Merchants: Cf. [Xen.] Rep. Ath. II, 3.

373 E Inevitable accompaniment: Cf. Porph. De Abstin . (Teubner, p. 73);
Phaedo 66 C; Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics , p. 362; Godwin, Political
Justice , of Property, chap, ii; P. C. Solberg and Guy-Charles Cros, “Platon et
le communisme, ” Mercure de France , CCXV (1929), 574-86.

375 C High-spirited .... yet gentle: For the “two temperaments” cf. on
Theaet. 144 AB and Unity , nn. 59, 481; Friedlander, II, 69, 24, 555. Cf.
Thomson, Outline of Science , II, 553; Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace
and War , pp. 54—55 and 59.

376 AB Dog .... a philosopher: Olympiodorus adds that the dog will al¬
low his friends to beat him, but not strangers, and that Socrates’ oath “by
the dog” is symbolic of his rational nature.

376 E Music .... gymnastic: Cf. 404 B, 412 A, 424 B, 456 B, etc.; Crito
50 DE; Ale. I 108 B ff.; Laws 673 A, 795 D, 955 A; Isoc. Antid. 181.

377 AB Effect of the stories: For the importance of early education cf.
Laws 765 E-766 B, 641 AB, 664 B ; infra 41 6 C. For the importance of a prop¬
er beginning cf. Laws 792 C, 753 E, 775 E, 788 CD.

377 D Anthropomorphic mythology: Cf. Decharme, La critique des tradi¬
tions religieuses chez les Grecs , p. 190 and passim. Cf. Euthyph. 5 E ff . and
Laws 941 B.

REPUBLIC— NOTES

561

379 A-C Of good only: Cf. Eurip. I.T. 390, 391, Gods who do wrong are
no gods; Eurip., frag. 292 (Nauck); Ion 449-51, Gods are not immoral but
men who teach such things. But in Androm. 1164 Apollo remembers grudges
like a bad man. Cf. also Dionysus in the Bacchae and Aphrodite in the Hip-
polytus. Boethius III. 12 argues that God cannot do evil. Evil therefore is
nothing, since there is nothing he cannot do.

381 E ff. Never deceives: Cf. Apol. 21 B 6; Pind. Pyth. IX. 42 and on
Lazus 730 C 1.

380 D ff. Never changes: Cf. Laws 797 D; Polit. 269 E 1; Ar. Met. 1074
b 26; Mill on Hamilton, I, 58.

386 ABC The future world: Cf. on Laws 727 D and Cratyl. 403 B-E. This
passage is mistakenly alleged to be inconsistent with the myth in Book X.

388-92 Heroes and demigods of old: Achilles’ uncontrolled grief for Patro-
clus (II. XXIV. 10-12; XVIII. 23-24); Priam rolling in the dust on seeing
Hector’s body dragged by Achilles’ chariot (ibid. XXII. 414-15); Thetis’ la¬
ment for Achilles (ibid. XVIII); Zeus grieving about Hector (ibid. XXII.
168) and Sarpedon (ibid. XVI. 433-34); the “quenchless laughter” of the
gods (ibid. I. 599-600); Achilles’ disrespectful words to his commander, Aga¬
memnon (ibid. 225 ff.); Odysseus’ overestimation of the pleasures of the table
(Od. IX. 8-10) and his deprecation of hunger (ibid. XII. 342); Zeus’s uncon¬
trolled passion for Hera (II. XIV. 294 ff.); the disgraceful conduct of Ares
and Aphrodite (Od. VIII. 266 ff.); Achilles accepting bribes (II. XIX. 278 ff.,
XXIV. 502, 555, 594) and counseled to do so by Phoenix (ibid. IX. 515 ff.);
Achilles reviling and threatening Apollo (ibid. XXII. 15, 20); his disobedience
to the river-god (ibid. XXI. 130-32) and cheating of another (ibid. XXIII.
1 51) and his cruel vindictiveness (ibid. XXIV. 14 ff., XXIII. 175-76); and
the rape of Helen by Theseus and Peirithous.

392 A Ingeniously adds: Cf. Laws 660 E where there is no such scruple.

378 D Allegorical interpretation: Cf. J. Tate, Class. Quart., 1929, pp. 142-
54; ibid., 1930, pp. 2 ff.; Shorey, Jour. Philos ., Ill (1906), 495-98; Bigg,
Christian Platonists of Alexandria 2, p. 173; Harnack, History of Dogma ,
77; Caird, Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophy , II, 187; Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, pp. 59 ff.

Of Heracleides: Homeric Allegories, Proem.

392 C ff. Aristotle's “Poetics”: 1449 b. Cf. Georg Finsler, Platon u. d.
aristot. Poetik , reviewed by Shorey in Class. Phil., Ill (1908), 461-62; Stephan
Weinstock, “Die Platonische Homerkritik u. ihre Nachwirkung,” Philologus ,
LXXXII (1927), 121-53.

392 D 5 Mimetic art: Cf. Shorey, review of Ingram Bywater’s Aristotle
on the Art of Poetry in the Nation , XC (1910), 319; review of W. PI. Fyfe’s
Aristotle, the “ Poetics ” (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927) in Class. Phil.,
XXII (1927), 324.

394 D Admission of tragedy: Cf. 398 AB and 607 A {., 568 A-C, 595 B,
605 C; Laws 656 C, 817 B.

394 DE Wind of argument blows: Cf. Unity, p. 5. WiL, II, 187 follows
this. Cf. on Laws 667 A and 681 C.

398 AB Send him away: The much-quoted and misquoted “banishment

WHAT PLATO SAID

562

of Homer.” Cf. the amazing comment of Frazer, Garnered Sheaves , p. 498.
C f. 394 D.

399 ff. Through the sensuous organism: Cf. Laws 669 B, 655 AB, 660 A,
812 C, 814 E.

398 C ff. Greek music: Cf. Laws 814 E f. and Loeb, Rep ., I, 245-47.

404 B Training of soldiers: Cf. Lazes 832 E ff. and Rabelais, I, 23, “Car,
disoit Gymnaste, telz saultz sont inutiles, et de nul bien en guerre.”

403 E Athletes: Cf. Laws 830 A; infra, 416 D, 422 B, 521 D, 543 B;
Laches 182 A; Demosth. XXV. 97. For the figure of athletes in another con¬
nection cf. Soph. 231 E; Phileb. 41 B.

405 BC Justice from without: Cf. Isoc. Antid . 238-39. For the scornful
tone of the whole passage cf. Shakes., Coriolanus , II, 1, “You wear out a good
wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a posset-
seller, and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of
hearing.”

405 C ff. Valetudinarianism: Cf. Democr., frag. 160 (Diels, Vors ., II3, 92,

13 ff-)'

409 A-C Best judge: Cf. Milton, Areopagitica , “And perhaps this is that
doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil; that is to say, of know¬
ing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is what wisdom can there
be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil?” Cf.
Laws 951 B; Eur. Hec. 602 and perhaps Ar. De an. 411 a 4-6.

409 CD Suspicious: Cf. Phaedr. 240 E 2; Theaet. 173 AB with Laws
679 C.

412 E ff. In both pleasure and pain: Cf. 503 A, 503 E, 539 E, 430 AB,
537 CD; Laws 751 C, 631 E-632 A, 633 C ff .

414 BC Plays providence: For the “noble lie” cf. Lazes 663 DE. Cf. su¬
pra , 382 C, 389 B; infra, 459 CD; Xen. Mem. IV. 2. 17.

416 E Common tables: Cf. Laws 780 B, 781 C, and passim.

416 D All things in common: All critical writers now recognize that Pla¬
to’s communism is primarily a device to secure disinterestedness in the ruling
class, though he sometimes treats it as a counsel of perfection for all men and
states. Cf. Loeb, Rep., I, Introd., xv and xxxiv, and on 424 A.

416 E Earthly gold: Cf. infra, 419, 422 D; Laws 742 A, 743 D, 746 A;
Crit. 1 12 C; Xen. Rep. Lac. VII. 6.

417 AB Tyrants instead of helpers: Cf. on Menex. 238 E; infra , 463 AB;
and Isoc. Panegyr. 80.

419 The rulers are not happy: Cf. Loeb ad loc. for an answer to the sophis¬
tical criticisms of Aristotle, Plerbert Spencer, and others.

420 D Attach to the guardians: For the idea that government should be
for the good of the whole state cf. Lazes 757 D, 715 B; infra , 4 66 A, 519 E-
520 A. Cf. also the idea that the political art cares not for the tdiov but the
Koivbv , Laws 875 A; Rep. 342 DE; Laws 923 AB. With TrpoaaTTeLV (D 6) cf.
the fine passage in Ar. Eth. 1099 a T5 and George Eliot’s “Mr. Casaubon
had thought of annexing happiness with a lovely young bride.”

423 AB Ours is a unity: Cf. Laws 712 E, 715 B, 832 C. Cf. Livy II. 24,
“Adeo duas ex una civitate discordia fecerat.”

REPUBLIC— NOTES 563

423 AB Growth in size: Cf. Loeb, Rep ., I, Introd., xxviii, and the number
5040 in the Laws 737 E-738 A.

424 B-D Innovations in “music”-. Cf. Loeb ad/oc. and Cic. De leg III. 14.

425 E Alter their had habits: Cf. Charm. 157 B; Emerson, Experience^ “A
wise and hardy physician will say, ‘Come out of that.’ ” Cf. Ep. VII. 330 D 1.

426 E Hydra s heads: Cf. Euthyd. 297 C; Soph. 240 C 4; and supra , on
Ion 541 B.

428 B Good counsel: For ev^ovXLa cf. Ale. I 125 E; Friedlander, II, 7.

429 CD Pleasure or pain: Cf. on 412 E ff. and Laches 191 DE.

430 B Opinions inculcated: Cf. on Polit. 309 C; Laws 632 C 5-6; Ar. Pol.
1227 b 28.

430 E Kind oj harmony: Aristotle ( Topics iv. 3. 5, 123 a 34 ff.) finds fault
with this definition. Cf. Burton, Anatomy oj Melancholy , p. 66, “A diapason
and sweet harmony.”

430 E Self-control: Cf. Laws 626 E f., 635 D, 863 D, 841 B, 696 B-E.

432 B Dramatic delay: The image of the hunt is followed up with view
hallo and surrounding of the covert. Cf. Loeb ad loc. and on Ion 535-36.

434 D Fit the individual ?nan: Cf. Laws 626 C ff.; Loeb, Rep., I, Introd.,
xxxv ; and infra , 591 E 1.

435 BC Three faculties: Cf. Unity , pp. 42-43. Here it is enough to ob¬
serve that the question, or the logomachy, in what sense the soul has “parts”
is still under debate, that Plato does not dogmatize about it but claims no
more for his classification than that it is practically sufficient for his present
purpose; that the classification cannot fairly be criticized by comparisons with
the categories of modern psychology; that there is little basis for speculations
about the Pythagorean origin of the doctrine, and none at all for the alleged
contradictions with the Phaedo and other dialogues. Cf. Phaedo 68 C, 82 C;
Phaedr. 246 B, 253 C; Rep. 439 B, 504 A, 550 AB, 580 D, 588 B ff.; Tim.
87 A, 89 E.

435 D A longer way: Cf. infra , 504 B. The thing to note is that for all
practical purposes the “longer way” is nothing mysterious. It is the higher edu¬
cation of the guardians which will enable them to apprehend the idea of good.

435 D For the present purpose: Cf. infra , 506 E, 533 A; Phaedo 85 C;
Tim. 29 BC; Soph. 254 C.

435E-436A Characteristics of nations: Cf. Laws 625 D, 704-5, 747 D;
Menex. 237 CD; Crit. 109 CD; Newman, Introd. Ar. “Pol.,” pp. 318-20,
Herod. VII. 102; IX. 122; IV. 28. The idea is often attributed to Aristotle
or to some modern writer without reference to Plato. Cf. Baudrillart, J. Bodin
et son temps, p. 41 4. It is most frequently associated with Buckle.

436 B ff. Principle of contradiction: Cf. on Soph. 257 B; Unity , p. 54, n.
391; p. 81 ; Shorey on Apelt, Class. Phil., VII (1912), 489-90.

437 C Movements: Cf. Epict. IV. 1. 72, a^op/djo-at; Hobbes, Leviathan, 6,
“This endeavor when it is toward something which causes it is called appetite
or desire .... and when the endeavor is fromward something it is generally
called aversion.”

437 D ff. Merely desires drink: Cf. the dramatic correction of a miscon¬
ception, Phaedo 79 B; infra, 529 AB.

WHAT PLATO SAID

56 4

438 AB Need not be identical: Cf. 437 E, 438 B; on Gorg. 476 CD; and
Laws 860 AB.

439 B That checks: Cf. on Phaedr. 237-38; Xen. Mem . II. 1. 2; and Ri-
gnano, Biological Memory , p. 207.

439-40 Thumos: Cf. Laws 731 BC and Johnson’s “He taught the passions
to move at the command of virtue.” Cf. McDougall, Introd. to Social Psy¬
chol ., p. 75; Cole, Factors of Human Psychol ., p. 307; Stratton, Anger , p. 134.
Bryce {On Good Citizenship) says that we are losing the power of righteous
indignation. Cf. Arnold, God and the Bible , Pref., p. x.

440 A Baser appetites: Cf. the fascination for tourists of the waxen repre¬
sentation of the plague in the Bordello, and James, Psychology , III, 554, “If
we are near a new sort of stink, we must sniff it again j ust to verify once more
how bad it is.”

440 B Takes the part of reason: Cf. Stratton, op. cit ., pp. 50, 56, 59,

458 E £f. Communistic marriage: Cf. Loeb, pp. 452-53, and Laws 773 B.
457 BC W aves of paradox: Cf. Loeb, I, Introd., xvii; cf. 452 E, 457 CDE,
458 AB, 461 E, 466 D, 471 C, 472 D, 473 CD.

469-71 JVars between Greeks: Cf. on Polit. 262 D; Rabelais, I, 46,
“Comme Platon liv. V. de Rep. vouloit estre non guerre nommee ains sedition,
quand les grecs mouvoient armes les uns contre les autres.”

472 B-E Irrespective of ... . realization: Cf. Loeb, I, Introd., xxxiii; Rep.
376 D, 501 E, 499 C; Laws 708-9, 745 E ff., 752 BC; and on Cratyl. 432 CD;
Shorey, Class. Phil., IX (1914), 351-52; also Laws 744 B, 739 DE, 807 BC,
925 DE; Friedlander, II, 413, 624, and 658.

473 CD Philosophers must become kings: Cf. 499 BC; Laws 71 1 D; Ep.
VII. 326 A.

479 AB Particulars of sense: Cf. Phaedo 78 D 10; Parmen . 131 D; infra ,

479 D-

Absolute non-being: Cf. on Theaet. 167 A; and infra , pp. 586, 591.

477 AB Between knowledge and ignorance: Cf. ‘ ‘A o£a als juera^v,” Natorp,
p. 495, and Unity, p. 47.

CRATYLUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abramczyk, Ilse, Platons Dialog “ Kratylos ” und das Problem der Sprach-
P kilo sophie. Breslau, 1928.

von Arnim, “Die sprachliche Forschung als Grundlage der Chronologie der
Plat. Dialoge und der Kratylos Sitzungsb. d. Ak. d. W. in Wien. CCX
(1929), Abh. 4.

Dummler, F., Akademika , pp. 129 ff. Giessen, 1889.

Friedlander, P. II, 196-218.

Heath, D., “On Plato’s Cratylus ,” Jour. Phil., XVII (1888), 192-218.
Jackson, H., Plato's “Cratylus,” “Cambridge Praelections” (1906), pp. 3-26.
Kiock, A., De Cratyli Platonici indole ac fine. Diss., Breslau, 1913.
Kirchner, H., Die verschiedenen Aujfassungen des Platonischen Dialogs “Kra-
tylus.” 1892.

Leky, M., Plato als Sprachphilosoph. Paderborn, 1919.

Meridier, L., Platon: QLuvres completes (ed. Bude), V, Part II. Paris, 1931.
Raeder, pp. 146-53.

Ritter, I, 462-76.

Rosenstock, P., Platos “ Kratylos ” und die Sprachphilosophie der Neuzeit.
1893.

Schaublin, F., Ueberden Plat. Dialog “Kratylos.” Basel, 1891.

Shorey, P., “On Plato’s Cratylus 389 D,” Class. Phil., XIV (1919), 85.
Steiner, Adalbert, “Die Etymologien in Platons Kratylos ,” Archivf. Gesch.
d. Philos ., XXIX, 109-32.

Steinthal, H., Gesch. d. Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Romern
(2d ed.), I, 79-112.

Taylor, pp. 75-89.

Van Ijzeren, J., “De Cratylo Heracliteo et de Platonis Cratylo ,” Mne?nosyne
XLIX (1921), 174-200.

Warburg, M., Zwei Fragen zum “Kratylos.” (“Neue philologische Unter-
suchungen,” Heft 5.) Berlin, 1929.

Wilamowitz, I, 286-98.

Zeller, 629-32.

NOTES

Punning ety?nologies: For a full discussion cf. Steiner, loc. cit. Most of
them are given in the Index to the fifth volume of Jowett and in the Index of
Apelt.

Sound principles of the science of language: Cf. PI. Steinthal, op. cit., 99 ff.;
Fr. Schaublin, op. cit., pp. 16 ff. Most of Plato’s etymologies, he thinks, are
correct. The etymology of yvvTj is virtually the same as that of Lobeck and
Curtius (p. 20). Cf. Raeder, p. 149; Max Leky, op. cit., p. 8; Taylor, Plato,

565

WHAT PLATO SAID

566

p. 84. The section 426 B-427 D is of great interest for phoneticians. Cf. D.
D. Heath, Jour. Philol ., XVII, 192-93: Plato’s theory of the origin of lan¬
guage is in accord with modern speculations in principle if not in detail. Ar¬
thur Levy, Die Philosophic Giovanni Picos della Mirandola (Berlin, 1908), p.
20: The Cratylus is the basis of Pico’s views on the problem of language. He
alludes to Benfey’s opinion that the Cratylus is the beginning of European
Sprachwissenschaft.

In several other dialogues: Cf. Laws 654 A 4-5, 957 C; Phaedo 80 D; Gorg.
493 AB; Phileb. 64 E; Phaedr. 244 A, 251 C; Rep. 551 E, 507 A, 343 C 6,
365 A, 540 C 2, 41 1 B 7; Prot. 312 CD, 326 E 1. Cf. Soph. 228 D ff.; Tim.
43 C; Sy?np. 201 D with Bury’s note ad loc. Grote and many modern critics
treat it as a special weakness of the primitive, the Greek, the Platonic mind.
That is true only in the sense that a few educated men today know that they
cannot safely guess etymologies but must accept the opinions of experts. The
majority of mankind do not know this principle, and most writers from the
Old Testament to Ruskin and Nietzsche do not act on it. The instinct to play
with words and support opinions by etymologies is almost universal, and even
today writers who know better cannot refrain from exploiting it. Educated
Englishmen in Palestine pretended to derive Allenby from Allah Nebi, and
the Berliner Tageblatt , May 17, 1914, said in all seriousness, “Das Wort
Gringo ist urspriinglich aus der Frage der Amerikaner ‘where is going the
way’ verballhornisiert worden.”

Hermogenes , Cratylus , and Euthyphro: Cf., e.g., E. Hottermann, “Platons
Polemik in Euthyphron und Kratylos Zeitschrift f. Gymnasialwesen , XL VI
(1910), 73-89. Cf. J. J. E. Hondius, Mnemosyne , N.S., XLIX (1921), 177 ff.,
who with some criticism of Wilamowitz discusses Plato’s attitude toward his
teacher Cratylus.

Statistics of Style: Hans von Arnim {op. cit.) concludes that the Cratylus ,
Meno , Gorgias , and Euthydemus form a group because they are the only dia¬
logues in which vai , ttclvv ye and irarv fitv ovv constitute more than 40 per cent
of all formulas of assent. The uselessness of further discussion here appears
from the fact that von Arnim cannot convince Max Warburg and Jaeger of
the correctness of his method, and he cannot understand how they can fail
to recognize its obvious validity. He also rejects their inferences from com¬
parisons with later Greek etymological lexicons.

To symbolize or satirize: Schleiermacher ( Platos IVerke , II, 2, p. 13) was
the first to see in the Cratylus an attack on Antisthenes and his theories about
language. Later he was joined by K. F. Hermann {Gesch. u. System d. Plat.
Philos ., pp. 489 ff., against the Megarians), Diimmler (pp. 129 ff.), Joel,
Raeder (p. 148), and others. Against this view cf. Zeller, 294, n. 1, and Fried-
lander, II, 205, n. 3 (contra Diimmler). Taylor (p. 89, n. 1) refuses to believe
that the Platonic Socrates ever attacks any of his own companions.

Cratylus 391 D-421 E, 426 C is a parody of Heraclitean etymologizing
(Zeller, op. cit.y II, i4, 632, n. 3). Robert Philippson (“Platons Kratylos und
Demokrit,” Phil. IVoch ., XLIX [1929], 923-27) discusses Proklos’ report of
Democritus’ arguments for deaei and Plato’s partial acceptance of them.

CRATYLUS— NOTES 567

A testimony to the unity of Plato’s thought: Cf. Unity, pp. 75—76 for a list of
parallels.

383 AB Fitness of names to things among Greeks and barbarians: Cf. 390 A,

427 D’ . ,

384 A All men: Cf. Xen. Mem. III. i. 5, ovd ’ eav vi to ttclvtuv avOpwiroov

atpedfj.

384 B Fine things are hard: Cf. Rep. 435 C, 497 D. Cf. Scholiast, Her¬
mann, VI, 235.

384 B Prodicus' fijty-drach?na course: Cf. Holmes, The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table , ‘‘The lack-lustre eye ... . all at once fills with light ....
nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture.” For Prodicus cf. on Laches
197 D; Ar. Rhct. III. 14, 1415 b 15. Cf. Zeller-Nestle, Phil. d. Gr.} I, ii6, 1312,
n. 5. For hits at the Sophists’ taking pay cf. on Hipp. Maj. 282 CD. For
Protagoras cf. Zeller-Nestle, op. cit ., 1299, n. 2.

384 C Join in a search: Cf. on Charm. 158 D.

385 A By the extreme case: Apelt and Wilamowitz (I. 289, misinterpret¬
ing. Polit. 261 E) think this represents Plato’s real opinion or the one to which
he came in Ep. VII. 343 AB. But cf. infra 433 E, 435 ABC. Cf. on Meno
87 BC.

385 B Is there such a thing: KaXeis rt. This Platonic formula for introduc¬
ing a notion is often misunderstood or misinterpreted. Cf. on Rep 349 E 1
(Loeb). Cf. Prot. 332 A, 351 B; Gorg. 450 C, 454 C; Phaedo 103 C; Phileb.
34 E 9, 37 A; Cratyl. 421 A 5; Rep. 608 D; Laws 819 E; Thompson on Meno

75 E.

The pri ov fallacy is just glanced at (cf. 429 D and on Theaet. 167 A) but
dismissed with the summary common-sense solution that the logos that says
things that are as they are is true, and that which says them as they are
not is false. Cf. Soph. 263 B; Euthyd. 284 C; and Ar. Met. 1051 b 5*

385 BC Smallest “parts of speech”: The phrase “parts of speech” is not
used here or in Isoc. Ep. 6.8 in its later technical sense. (Cf. Ar. Poetics
1456 b 2). “True” obviously here means “right.” Cf. 387 C, 391 AB, 430 D.
Plato is of course aware that, strictly speaking, only a sentence or proposition
is true or false (Soph. 262-63). Cf. the logomachy about the “fallacy” of
calling pleasures true or false in the Philebus (36 C ff.).

386 D At the same time: These quibbles have been dignified as systems,
the theory of Protagoras being denominated relativity in succession and that
of Euthydemus contemporaneous relativity. The Parmenides employs both.
Plato reserves the “problem” of these fallacies for the Theaetetus and the
Sophist. Here he mentions them in passing. In the Euthydemus he parodies
them. He obviously is not puzzled but only annoyed by them. Cf. Unity ,

* * 387 B ** Speech is a form of action: Modern psychologists repeat this as a
new result of science. Cf., e.g., Judd, Psychology , p. 187; Dewey, Experience ,
pp. 183, 184.

388 A Language — the name — is a tool: Cf. G. Hatzidakis, ’AKadTjpeiKa ’A^a-
yvccapiaTa, III, 579, who argues against the once widely diffused view of

WHAT PLATO SAID

568

Schleicher and F. Muller that language is a physical science, a living organism,
etc. Cf. De Laguna, Speech , p. 49, “Language is correlative to the tool.” Cf.
ibid.) p. 244. Apelt, p. 137, quotes Schiller, “Und mein gefliigelt Werkzeug ist
das Wort.” Cf. Joly, Man before Metals , p. 319, “We make words as we make
tools at the demands of our needs, etc.” Cf. already W. D. Whitney, Language
and the Study of Language (5th ed., 1877), pp. 35 ff.; The Life and Growth of
Language (1896), pp. 1 and 278.

389 A The imposer or maker of names: It is captious to find contradic¬
tions in Plato’s variations of the expression of this idea. Lawgiver, name-
imposer ( ovojiaaTLKSs , 424 A; tcx^kos, 426 A), demiourgos of names (431 E),
God, some more than human power (397 C, 438 C), nature, dialectician
(390 D), are merely diverse names for whatever principle of law, design, or
reason we may postulate or discover in language. Cf. Tim. 83 C, Charm.
175 B 4.

389 B Fixes his eye on the natural type or idea: Cf. Rep. 596 B 4-5; Unity,
p. 31. For aurb 6 \gtiv (389 B 5) cf. Phaedo 74 D 6.

389 C Into the appropriate material: Cf. Rep. 500 D; Ar. Met. 1044 a 28.
Cf. Aristotle on matter and form; Zeller, Ar. (Eng.), I, 357. Leslie Stephens
{Science of Ethics , pp. 75, 35) elaborates this idea in innocence of all predeces¬
sors.

390 A Alike among Greeks and barbarians: Cf. 383 AB. Cf. Minos 316 A
and Ar. Eth. Nic. 1134 b 26, fire burns both here and among the Persians.

390 B The judge of its rightness is the user: Cf. on Rep. 601 C (Loeb);
Phaedr. 274 E; Euthyd. 289 B.

390 C 11 The dialectician: Cf. Rep. VII 531 DE, 534 . B, D. Zeller, 616,
n. 3; Adam, App. Ill to Book VII (on Plato’s dialectic), ed. of Rep. II,
168 ff. The word is introduced as elaborately as if it were new. Cf. on Phileb.
C2 D-C4; cf. Phaedr. 266 C 1. For dialectic cf. on Charm. ICC A; Laws 0 66 C:
Meno 75 CD; Phileb. 58 D.

391 B Fees and gratitude to the Sophists: For the combination cf. Rep.
338 B 3 ff. Cf. also on Hipp. Maj. 282 CD; Xen. Symp. i. 5.

391 E But men Scamander: II. XX. 74. Pliny V. 124 (V. 33) distinguishes
between Xanthus and Scamander. Cf. Pauly-Wiss., s.v. “Skamandros.”

393 D Letters are our elements: arocxeia. Cf. infra , 424; Phileb. 18 B,
17 B; Polit. 277 Eff.; Soph. 252EAF.; Theaet. 203; Tim. 48 B; Xen. Econ.
VIII. 14-15; Isoc. 13. 10. Cf. Gehrke, Rhein. Mus.} 1907, p. 186. Cf. Fried-
lander, II, 454, 531-32, 607.

397 CD Believed in the divinity of the sun: Cf. Laws 899 B, 950 D; Ar.
Peace 406 ff. (schol. ad loc.); Herod. IV. 188. On early religion cf. Epin.
988 B, 985 B. Cf. Jessen in Pauly-Wiss., VIII, 63.

397 D Is derived from “thein”i Cf. Herod. II. 52, Oeos from ride/iou. Still
debated. Cf. Arnold, God and the Bible , p. 29.

397 D Heroes are rhetors and lovers: Cf. Bruno, eroici furori , and Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1 145 a 20.

400 D Real or affected unction: Cf. 425 C; Crit. 107 B; Laws 672 B.

400 E Whatsoever names they may prefer: Cf. Shorey on Horace C.S. 15-

CRATYLUS— NOTES 569

16 and Euthyd. 288 B. Phileb. 30 D 3; Tim. 28 B. Cf. Aesch. Ag. 160 with
Blaydes’ note. Cf. Stallbaum ad loc.

401 B With Hestia: Cf. Euthyph . 3 A. Burnet, note, says only there and
Ar. Wasps 846.

402 A The principle of Heraclitus: Cf. Zeller-Nestle I, ii6, 799, n. 1. ^

409 A-C Dithyrambic etymology of Selene: ^eXijprj = aeXasf 2e\apaia =

SeXaevo^eoaeta = on creXas veov Kai evov

Anaxagoras' recent theory : Cf. Zeller-Nestle I, ii6, 1242, n. 1, who refers to
Plut. Fac. lun. XVI. 7; Hippol. Refutatio I. 8; Stob. I. 558.

409 D Older Greek words: Cf. Lysias 10. 16 flf.; Demosth. 23. 24.

418 C Speech of women: Cf. Cicero De or . III. 12 and French critics on
the language of Mme. de Lafayette and Mme. de Sevigne.

41 1 BC The flux of things: Cf. 439 C; Theaet. 179 E ff., Symp. 207-8,
Phaedo 90 C 5, 91 D 7.

423 E Say that it is: Plato is aware that, as Schopenhauer says, language
is essentially abstraction. Cf. Phaedr. 249 B.

424 D Is to apply names: This is essentially the procedure in Phaedr .
271 D recommended for the constitution of a scientific rhetoric.

424 DE As painters: Cf. Emped. frag. 23 (Diels I3, 234).

425 D Absurd as the imitation .... may seem: Plato here as often laughs
at himself, forestalling objections. Cf. 426 B; Theaet. 200 B; Meno 96 E; Rep .
536 B; Lysis 223 B; and on Phaedo 102 D. Cf. Phileb. 23 D; Rep . 392 D;
Prot. 340 E; Rep. 540 C; Theaet. 197 D 5; 200 B, Soph. 246 B. Cf. Fried-

lander, I, 172.

425 D Deus ex machina: Cf. on Ion 541 E. Cf. Cic. Nat. deor. I. 20,. Lit
tragicae poetae, cum explicare argumenti exitum non potestis confugitis ad

deum.” f

426 E Iota .... can slip in and out through everything: Cf. Plato s own

sentence, Rep. 399 D 8.

428 B Cratylus is satisfied: For the interlocutor’s acceptance of every the¬

ory cf. on Lysis 218 BC.

428 D The worst of all deceptions: Cf. Rep . 382 AB; Phaedo 91 B 5-6;
Gorg. 458 A 7.

429 B May have been mistaken: Cf. Rep. 339 C; Theaet. 178 A.

429 B Mistaken name is no name: Cf. Minos 316 AB and on Hipp. Maj.
283-84.

429 D Postpones _ to the Sophist: Cf. on 385 B; Unity , p. 54; and on

Theaet. 167 A.

430 D Error in pictures: Cf. the question raised in Soph. 240 A.

431 A To the relief of Socrates: Cf. on Euthyd. 282 C. Obviously Plato
postpones the question to the Theaetetus and Sophist. For evasion of logom¬
achy cf. on Laws 627 B.

432 A Socrates distinguishes: Cf. Diels3, II, 342. If you take away one
from ten there is no longer ten or one. Cf. Ar. Met. 1024 a 16, 1043 b 37-

432 CD Falls short of the reality: Cf. Tim. 52 C; Phaedo 74-75; 473 A

(Loeb); on Rep. 472 B.

57o

WHAT PLATO SAID

433 P 1 Late learners : For oypip.aOi]s or late learner cf. on Rep. 409 B
(Loeb); Soph. 251 B. Cf. Isoc. Helena 2, Panath. 96, and for the idea Helena
I, KdTayeyirjpaKao’LV.

434 E What is habit but convention: Cf. Emped. frag. 9. 5 (Diels I3, 227):
j'o/xa* 8’ eiriiprjiiL Kai avros ; Theaet. 157 B 2, vto crvvTjOeias.

435 B Silence is taken Jor consent: Cf. Eur. I. A. 1 142.

435 C Far-fetched and strained: Cf. supra , 427 B 7, 414 C 3; Rep. 488 A,
553 C; Burnet on Crito 53 E; Isoc. To Phil. 142. Goodwin (Harvard Studies,
I, 68) strangely accepts Jowett’s amazing translation, “The force of resem¬
blance .... is a mean thing.” So Moods a?id Tenses , p. 391.

435 C Cheap and vulgar principle: Because not teleological. Cf. Tim.
47 E; Phaedo 98 A, 99 AB. Cf. on Rep. 442 E (Loeb).

437 D By a majority vote: Cf. Laches 184 E; Gorg. 471 E-472 C. Cf. the
reflections of Mill, Logic , I, § 3.

439 C Their own inner confusion: Cf. supra on 41 1 BC. For 8ivr\v cf.
Phaedo 99 B.

439 C 7 Suppose my dream were true: Phileb. 20 B; Theaet. 201 D 8; Polit.
290 B 7. This is just irony. It is uncritical to press this for the inference that
this is the first doubtful suggestion of the theory of ideas. Cf. Phaedr. 252 C,
believe it or not.

439 D Not predicate any quality of them: Cf. Theaet. 152 D, 183 A; Par-
men. 164 A; Tim. 49 E; Soph. 252 C. Every reference in Zeller, p. 645, n. 2,
is irrelevant except Cratyl. 439 C. Cf. Huxley, Ev. and Ethics , p. 49, “As he
utters the words, nay, thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable; the
present has become the past.”

439 E Never departs from its own form: Cf. Rep. on God, 380 D 8. Cf.
Tim. 50 B 8; Ar. Hist. an. I. 1, 488 b 19.

440 B Not an easy question to decide: Cf. Rep. 532 D on ideas, hard to
accept and hard to reject. Cf. Parmen. 135 A-C.

440 CD A man afflicted with the flux: Slight coarseness as in Theaet. 161 C.

By a single conjectural design in Plato's 7nind: Cf. on Euthyphro , in fine
supra, pp. 78-79. Cf. my review of Friedlander in Class. Phil., XXVI (1071)
107. Cf. supra, p. 185.

THEAETETUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, W. J., “The Aim and Results of Pl.’s Theaetetus ” Studies in
Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve , pp. 169-83. Baltimore, 1903.

Bitterauf, Karl, “Die Bruchstiicke des anonymus Jamblichi,” Philologus ,
LXVIII (1909), 500-522.

Bonitz, Plat. Stud., pp. 47-92.

Boodin, John E., “From Protagoras to William James,” Monist , XXI (1911),
73“9i •

Burnet, John, Review of “Plato or Protagoras?” by F. C. S. Schiller, in
Mind, XVII (1908), 422-23.

Campbell, L., The “Th.” of Plato. 2d ed. Oxford, 1883.

Chiappelli, A., “Ueber die Spuren einer doppelten Redaktion des Plat.

Thedtets ,” Archivf. Gesch. d. Philos ., XVII (1904), 320-33.

Dies, Aug., Platon: (Euvres completes, VIII, Part II. Paris, 1924.

- , “Platonica: L’Apologie de Protagoras ( Theetete 166 a-168 b) Rev.

phil, XXXVII (1913), 62-67.

Friedlander, II, 415-59.

Grote, III, 1 10-84.

Kreis, Friedrich, “Die Lehre des Protagoras und ihre Darstellung in Pla¬
tons Theaetet ,” Archivf. Gesch. d. Philos., XXXV (1923), 43-49.

Laas, E., Idealismus und Positivismus. I. Berlin, 1879.

Natorp, pp. 90-119.

Parker, Charles P., “Plato and Pragmatism,” Harvard Essays on Classical
Subjects, pp. 175-206. Cambridge, 1912.

Raeder, pp. 279-97.

Ritter, II, 96-120.

Rohde, E., “Die Abfassungszeit des Plat. Thedtets ,” Kl. Schr ., I, 256-308.
Leipzig, 1901.

Sachs, Eva, De Theaeteto ath. mathematico. Diss., Berlin, 19 14.

Schiller, F. C. S., “Plato or Protagoras?” Mind, XVII (1908), 518-26.

- , “The Humanism of Protagoras,” ibid., XX (1911), 181-96.

Shorey, P., “Horace Sat. I, 3, 1 12-13 and Plato Theaetetus 172 AB,” Class.
Phil., XVI (1921), 164-68.

- , Unity , pp. 66 ff.

- , AJP, IX. 300-305.

- , Diss., pp. 17 ff.

Stallbaum-Wohlrab, Platonis “Theaetetus.” 2d ed. Lipsiae, 1891.

Taylor, pp. 320-48.

Wilamowitz, I, 513-33; II, 230-37.

Zeller, E., “Ueber die zeitgesch. Bez. d. PI. Th.” Kl. Schr., I, 348-68. Ber¬
lin, 1910.

57i

WHAT PLATO SAID

572

Zeller, E., “Ueber die Unterscheidung einer doppelt. Gestalt in d. Plat.

Schr.,” ibid., pp. 369-97.

- , “Die Abfassungsz. d. PI. 77*.,” ibid., I, 473-98; II, 20-32.

Anon., Review of “Plato or Protagoras?” by F. C. S. Schiller, in Her?nathena ,

XV (1909), 257.

NOTES

Its theme is psychological: Cf. Shorey, Diss ., p. 17, n. 3 : “Problema Theaete-
ti est: eiireiv tL tot’ earl tovto t6 t ados Tap ’ rjpuv Kai riva tpotov eyyiy vopevov
(187 D), Sophistae vero: tovto (esse errorem) (bOey^apevov evavTLo\oyiq prj
avvex^Oai (236 E). Alterum psychologicum est, logicum alterum.” Cf.
Shorey, Recent Platonism, p. 301 ; Apelt, Introd. to Sophist (1922), p. 130.

142 A Euclid of Megara: Euclides, the founder of the Megarian school,
was a friend and pupil of Socrates at whose death he was present ( Phaedo
59 C). According to Diog. L. II. 108, he wrote six dialogues, the genuineness
of which, however, was doubted by Panaetius (Diog. L. II. 64). Cf. Natorp,
in Pauly-Wiss., s.v.; Zeller, pp. 244 ff.; Ueberw.-Pr., pp. 156-57.

Terpsion : A Megarian, present at the death of Socrates ( Phaedo 59 C).
Cf. Suidas, s.v. 'ZooKpaTrjs; Plut. De gen. Socr. 11 (581 A).

142 AB From the battle of Corinth: Campbell (Theaetetus, p. Ixi) still held

that the battle referred to is that which took place in 390. The prevailing
opinion is that the battle is that fought against Epaminondas in 369, which
would make the dialogue late. For the literature on the question of the date
of the Theaetetus down to 1891 cf. Stallbaum-Wohlrab, pp. 42 ff. Gomperz
(III, 349-50) places the dialogue between 374 and 367 b.c. partly on stylistic
grounds but especially on the strength of the episode in 173 DE and the allu¬
sion to panegyrics in 174 D ff. He thinks that the battle of Corinth cannot be
used for determining the date of the dialogue. This battle occurred in 369
and the dialogue must have followed soon after according to Eva Sachs; also
Sokrates , V (1917), S31- Taylor, p. 320.

143 A On subsequent visits: At the end of the dialogue Socrates goes to
answer the indictment laid against him before the king archon. This would
seem to be incompatible with Euclid’s meeting him from time to time in later
visits to Athens. On the other hand, if Theaetetus was a promising student
of mathematics before Socrates’ death, he would be about fifty years old in
369. Cf. Wendland ( Die Aufgaben der Platonischen For s chung, “Nachrichten
v. d. Konigl. Gesellschaft der Wiss. zu Gottingen,” Heft 2 [1910], p. 107) on
Plato’s art in getting over this difficulty.

143 B Will read it: Cf. Lysis 209 A 8; Phaedo 97 BC, Isoc. Panath. 251.
The ancients usually had things read to them.

143 C In purely dramatic form: Cf. Wil., I, 51 1; Campbell, Introd., p.
lxiii; Zeller, 506, n. 1. Cf. Cic. De amicit. I. 1, “Ne ‘inquam’ et ‘inquit’ saepius
interponerentur”; Cic. Tusc. I. 4, “Sic eas exponam, quasi agatur res, non
quasi narretur.”

143 D Theodoras of Cyrene: He is said to have taught Plato mathematics
(Diog. L. II. 103; III. 6).

THEAETETUS— NOTES

573

144 AB Ideal student in the “ Republic ”: Rep. 485 B-487 A. Cf. 503 C.
Cf. Friedlander, II, 418. For the two temperaments cf. also Rep. 410 DE,
503 CD; Charm. 159 B ff. with Polit. 306-7; Prot. 331 D, 349 E; Laches 196 E
with Rep. 430 B and Laws 963 E, Laws 681 B, 735 A, 773 B, 831 E; and
Phaedr. 243 C 3; Epin. 989 B.

144 D Bids him “come here ”: Cf. Meno to his slave, Meno 82 B 3. Cf. M.
Schanz, Com?nentationes Platonicae , pp. 100-101.

145 de Wisdom or science or knowledge: Plato does not wish to discrimi¬
nate synonyms here, as Aristotle does when discussing the intellectual vir¬
tues {Eth. Nic. 1 1 40-41).

147 A With water: Ar. Topics 127 a 13 ff. criticizes this definition.

147 D Grasp them in a unity: Cf. Phaedr. 249 B; Soph. 227 C 3; Tim.
63 E, 83 C; Rep. 580 DE; Parmen. 132 C, 135 B 8; Phileb. 16 D, 18 D 1-2,
23 E 5, 25 C 11, 25 D 6, 26 D 1-2.

Read profound mathematical ?neanings into the passage: Wendland (p. 107)
speaks vaguely of an “intuitiver Ahnung” of his future “Theorie der quadra-
tischen Irrationalitaten. Cf. Stallbaum-Wohlrab, Proleg., p. 25, n. 1. Cf.
Burnet, Early Greek Phil ., p. 105.

149-50 This comparison or allegory: Cf. 210 B. Cf. also Symp. 206 flF.;
Rep. 490 B. Cf. also perhaps Phaedrus 276 E 6, 278 A 6. Aristoph. Clouds
137 is not really relevant.

151 E “Nothing else but ” sensation or awareness: Note the dogmatic form
given to the definition by the first three words. But cf. 146 D 2. For this
type of definition cf. also Rep. 338 C. There is no precision in the use of psy¬
chological terminology even today. Plato’s meaning must always be learned
from the entire context. alaOrjaLS is not exactly sensation or perception or
awareness or consciousness, but may sometimes be any one of them. For
the alleged pre-Socratic confusion of sensation and intelligence cf. Ar. De an.
3; Met. 1009 b 12.

The attribution of a false conversion to Theaetetus here is fanciful.

152 A With Protagoras' doctrine: There is no evidence or probability that
Protagoras or anybody else had thus explicitly and systematically identified
and generalized them. Cf. supray p. 124. Strictly speaking, what Plato attrib¬
utes to Protagoras is the perpov. Cf. Cratyl. 385 E ff.; infra , 160 CD, 162 C,
166 D (?), 167 D, 168 D, 169 AB (?), 170 D, 171 C ff., 179 B, 183 C.
Cf. Unityy pp. 67-68.

152 A Man is the ?neasure: Cf. Cratyl. 386 A; Laws 716 C. Cf. Diels, s.v.
“Protagoras”; Gomperz, Apologie der Heilkunsty pp. 26 and 175; Pater, Mari¬
us the Epicureany p. 99; Natorp, “Protagoras und sein Doppelganger,” Philol-
ogusy L, 262-87; Apelt, p. 160. The majority of modern scholars take “man”
to mean the individual. Cf. Zeller-Nestle, Die Philos, d. Gr.y I, II6, 1357, n. 1.
It may be interesting but it is irrelevant to ask whether Plato was historically
justified in this and similar interpretations. He propounds and discusses ma¬
terialistic and relativistic and subjective philosophies in all their aspects. We
possess but a few lines of Protagorasy Diels Vorsokr.3 74 B, II, 228 ff. All else
that is said about him is inference from the sometimes contradictory state-

574

WHAT PLATO SAID

ments in the two Platonic dialogues, the Theaetctus and the Protagoras , and
from Aristotle who follows Plato. Grote (III, 1 1 5 ff., 137 ff.) both defends the
Protagorean dictum and denies its dependence upon or necessary connection
with the opinion that knowledge is sense perception. His arguments and quo¬
tations from other relativistic philosophers from Cicero and Sextus Empiricus
to Sir William Hamilton are interesting in themselves but are very slightly
relevant to the interpretation of Plato. In his eagerness to refute the sup¬
posed “absolutism of Plato” he forgets his admission that we don’t know what
Protagoras’ book may have said, and affirms dogmatically what Protagoras
must have meant by his dictum. Even Mill, who generally agrees with Grote,
defends Plato against him on this point. Cf. Dissertations and Discussions
(Holt, 1873), IV, 309-10.

161 A Unable to answer it: Cf. Class. Phil., XXIII (1928), 349; “Recent
Platonism,” p. 302: “Like Theaetetus (157 C) Mr. Jackson is at first in doubt
whether Socrates is in earnest or is merely ‘trying’ him, etc. For the real
ground of Plato’s antipathy to thepeovres lies not at all in their language con¬
cerning the world of fleeting phenomena, but in a matter almost wholly ig¬
nored by Mr. Jackson — their ethical scepticism and their nominalism. The
Ko/ixf/oTepoi are virtually nominalists. Cf. supra , p. 39. They try not to admit
oipis, but only an o^OaXpos opwv, they recognize Xevxov but not XevKbrrjs
(156 DE).” Grote (III, 115) naively admits the difficulty or impossibility
of distinguishing between the ironical and the serious, and on p. 158 says,
“Perhaps he [Plato] meant to speak ironically,” where the Greek synonyms
and the entire context prove that Plato certainly is speaking ironically.
Franck ( Platon u. d. sogcnajmten Pythagoreer , p. 96, n. 239) takes 153-54 as
Plato’s own doctrine. Cf. Joachim, The Nature oj Truth , p. 127 and passim;
Burnet, History oj Greek Philos ., I, 242; Schiller, “Plato or Protagoras?”
Mind , Vol. XVII; Eastman, New Poetry, “It was the mood of Protagoras and
of that Protagorean vision in Plato which was the height of ancient wisdom.”

155 D W onder is the parent oj philosophy: Hobbes (IV, 49) attributes “all
philosophy from admiration” to the Symposium. Cf. Delacroix, Psychologie
del' art, p. 84, “Hegel n’avait pas tort de dire que l’art aussi bien que la science
et la religion a son origine dans l’etonnement.” Carlyle is quoted to the effect
that “the man who cannot wonder .... is but a pair of spectacles.” Cf.
Schop., W elt als JVille, I, 7. Cf. Phaedo 97 A; Polit. 291 B 6. Hence Aristotle’s
correction of Theaetetus (Met. 983 a 18). Cf. Cic. De div. 2.22; Democ. (Diels)
II3. 54, 13. Horace’s “nil admirari” (Ep. 1.6.1) and Democritus’ aOavpacrTia
use wonder in a different sense. Hence Hermann’s notion that our passage
is a sneer at Democritus is perhaps fanciful. Dickens, Hard Times, chap,
viii, “Never wonder.” Emerson, Society and Solitude, “Men love to wonder
and that is the seed of our science.” Ar. Met. 982 b 13 (1.2). Cf. Meyerson,
Del' explication dans les sciences, p. 1 14, “Platon nous l’a dit, la science a pour
point de depart l’etonnement, et l’affirmation de Riemann aboutit a la meme
conclusion.” Fowler, Relig. Experience oj Roman People, p. 322. Cf. Phileb .
36 E i; Ross, Ar., p. 154. Campbell refers to Hermann, Gesch. d. Plat. Phil.,
P- 153-

THEAETETUS— NOTES

575

155 E From the subtler “mysteries”: For materialism cf. on Soph. 247 C.
For Plato's use of the language of the mysteries cf. on Meno 7 6 E.

*56-57 A momentary eddy in the flux: Cf. on Symp. 207 E-208 A. Cf.
the “sheet of phaenomena” that swings between subject and object in James,
Psychology , I, 354. For juera£6 (156 D 6) cf. Ar. Met. 1022 b 6; Cratyl. 440 B.

157 B All the conventional static expressions: Plato’s caricature here and
179 E and 183 B falls short of many serious modern developments of the
doctrine. Cf. Trotzky, “The static attitude of mind gives way to the dy¬
namic”; the heroine o i Main Street , “Whatever she might become she would
never become static.” Cf. Follett, Creative Experience , p. 58, “All static ex¬
pressions should be avoided”; Frank Harris, “A scientific morality belonging
not to statics like the morality of the Jews.” Cf. the critics who explain that
“Whitman wished his style to mirror the faultiness of the world,” and many
others.

157 BC Aggregations: The a Opoia/jia here is the thing regarded as an aggre¬
gation of qualities (cf. Phileb. 14 D 1-3; Diog. L. X. 62, 64; Sext. Empir.,
p. 629 [Bekker]; Alcinous IV, Hermann, VI, 1 56), not the idea regarded as the
conceptual unification of many things. Cf. James, op. cit., I, 285, “But in it¬
self, apart from my interest a particular dust wreath on a windy day is just
as much of an individual thing, and just as much or as little deserves an indi¬
vidual name, as my own body does.” Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowl¬
edge, “And as several of those are observed to accompany each other, they
come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus for
example a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been ob¬
served to go together, are accounted one distinct thing signified by the name
apple.” Cf. Mill on Hamilton, I, 17, “What we term an object is but a com¬
plex conception made up by the laws of association, etc.,” and his “permanent
possibility of sensation” (ibid., p. 243). Cf. also the “constructs” and “ejects”
of Lloyd Morgan and Romanes; Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, p. 183,
“A thing is .... a portion of Space-Time, etc.” In modern physics “a thing
is made up not only of electrons and protons but also of a macroscopic field
in which these particles are imbedded.”

158 B Dreams: Cf. Shakes., “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”;
Calderon, La vida es sueho; Cic. Lucullus 16. Schopenhauer (Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung, I, § 5) gives many illustrations. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, II,
“And because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams but never
dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied and being
awake I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake.”
Havelock Ellis (The World of Dreams, p. 65) seems to say that the recognition
of dreaming in a dream is impossible though borne witness to by Aristotle and
Synesius and Gassendi. Volkman, Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer, p. 96, “A
man dreamt that he should not believe his dreams; what should he believe
on awakening?” Poe (A Tale of the Ragged Mountains') quotes Novalis that
“we are near waking when we dream that we dream.” Arnobius Adversus
nationes , ed. Reifferscheid, p. 52 (II. 7), “Immo, quod ambigit in Theaeteto
Plato, uigilemus aliquando an ipsum vigilare quod dicitur somni sit perpetui

576

WHAT PLATO SAID

portio . ” Levy-Bruhl, How Natives Think , p. 58, ‘To conclude with a

peculiarly happy dictum of Spencer and Gillen: ‘What a savage experiences
during a dream is just as real to him as what he sees when he is awake/ ”

158 E Therefore a wholly different thing: Cf. Cratyl. 432 A. Cf. Lucret. III.
519-20:

nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit,
continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante.

159 CD Sour to the other: Cf. Marshall, The Beautiful , p. 80.

161 A Jest or earnest: But ylyvecrOcu aei ayaOov Kai kolkov is conclusive
both for Plato’s disapproval of the flowing philosopher and for the doctrine
of ideas in the Theaetetus . Cf. on 172 AB, 167 C; supra , p. 274.

161 C /« Plato's irritation: Fanciful is Burnet’s notion that the irritation
is due to fallacies directed against a theory which is Plato’s own. For a
similar coarseness cf. Cratyl . 440 C 8. He apologizes in 166 C. Cf. Goldwin
Smith contra Herbert Spencer: “If a woman suckling her child is the most
perfect instance of human morality, what are we to say of a sow suckling a
litter of ten pigs?” Gomperz, I, 461, errs on Ar. Met . 1053 a 35 on this. Binet,
Lame et le corps , p. 129, why not un “ceil de mollusque”?

Satire on the coarseness of Antisthenes: “Dog = cynic.” Cf. Dummler, An -
tisthenica, pp. 58 fF. Zeller, 301, n. 1 ; Stallbaum-Wohlrab, Proleg., p. 30. More¬
over, Plato’s style, 161 C, ideyaXoirpeTrobs, proves it Plato. Cf. Euthyd. 293 A;
Burnet, Greek Phil., p. 242.

162 AB The Truth of Protagoras: Allusion to the title of Protagoras’ work,
sometimes supposed to have been entitled KaTafiaWovres (cf. on Euthyd. 272^)
or avTLhoyiai. Books bearing the title ’A\T]0eia were written by Parmenides,
Antiphon, Antisthenes, and Simmias. Cf. Diels, Vors ., II3, 228, 8 n. (. Prot .
74 B 1, 8 n.). Cf. Soph. 246 B 9. Cf. 161 C, 166 D, 170 E, 171 C.

Aristotle (Met. 1005 b 3 ff.) uses the phrase, apparently with no such al¬
lusiveness. Cf. also 1009 b 37, 1010 a 1, 1010 b i, etc.

164 CD Admits to be such: Cf. supra , 161 A, p. 272. Cf. Lysis 216 AB.
With 165 B 8 cf. Euthyd. 276 E. In 165 A 6, prj Tpoaex^v rols prjpaaL t6v vovv ,
etc., is often misunderstood. The meaning is “We should admit still more out¬
rageous fallacies if we affirmed and denied carelessly as men usually do (cf.
Soph. 242 C; Rep. 454 A) without paying close attention to the meanings of
our words.” To escape fallacy a precision of language is required which Plato
sometimes deprecates as unnecessary pedantry. Cf. on Meno 87 BC.

The fallacies of the “ Gorgias ”: Cf. supra , p. 146 (Gorg. 495 ff.). Cf. Shorey,
review of Gomperz’ Greek Thinkers in Class. Phil., I (1906), 296 ff.

166 A Imaginary Protagoras conjured up: Cf. also the humorous touch
in 171 D 1.

166 D-167 More true than another: Modern critics treat this as Protago¬
ras’ anticipation of the modern idea of value and judgments of value.

That harps on it: Modern pragmatists insist that Plato has nowhere an¬
swered Protagoras’ argument. We must distinguish. He refutes the defini¬
tion: Sense perception is knowledge (infra, p. 581). Whether he does or does

THEAETETUS— NOTES

577

not refute the relativity of sense perception, he clearly shows his distaste for
the futility of reiterating so fruitless a generalization, though he himself in
Tim. 51 A practically admits that the world of sense is a flux.

167 A Say the thing which is not: Cf. on Euthyd. 286 C; Cratyl. 429 D;
Soph. 237-39; cf. on Rep. 476 E (Loeb); Unity , pp. 53-55; Parmen. 132 BC,
142 A, 164 A, 166 A; Theaet. 188 D.

167 C The so-called peritrope: Cf. Euthyd. 286 C 4; Gorg. 488 D; Axiochus
370 A 7; Diog. L. III. 35; Ar. Met. 1008 a 29, 1012 b 14.

Banish that something more: Cf. Goethe, “ Vom absoluten im theoretischen
Sinne wag ich nicht zu reden; behaupten aber darf ich, dass wer es in der Er-
scheinung anerkannt und immer im Auge behalten hat, sehr grossen Gewinn
davon erfahren wird.” Cf. Chesterton contra H. G. Wells, Heretics, pp. 81-84.

172 AB But when it comes to good , benefit. . . . : Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil.,
XVI (1921), 164. Cf. Rep. 505 D. For the logic of the reference to the future,
cf. Macaulay on Mill’s essay on government: “Their interest may be op¬
posed in some things to that of their poorer contemporaries; but it is identical
with that of the innumerable generations which are to follow.”

172 C Having leisure: Cf. 154 E 8, 187 D; Laws 781 E, 858 B 5, 887 B 3.
Misunderstood transition: Cf. Class. Phil., XVI, 166-68 and Mrs. Grace
Hadley Billings’ dissertation: The Art of Transition in Plato (Chicago, 1920),
p. 24.

172 C Knocked about: KvKivbobpevoi , a contemptuous word. Cf. Rep.
479 D; Phaedr. 257 A; Polit. 309 A 6; Soph. 268 A; Isoc. Antid. 30; Philip. 82;
Against the Sophists 20, twv 1 repl ras epcbas Ka\Lvbovp'evcov .

172 E-173 A The main chance or life itself: For irepi ipvxys o bpopos cf. II.
XXII. 1 61 ; Aristoph. IV asps 376; Herod. VII. 57; VIII. 74; VIII. 102;
VIII. 140 a. Cf. Eurip. Phoenissae 1330, aye bra t6v irepl \ pvxys; Heracl. 984;
Pearson on Helena 946. Cf. esp. Blaydes on Wasps 375.

173 A Wholesome growth: Cf. Laws 791-92. Rousseau also deprecated
emotion and temptation in childhood.

The way to the courthouse: Cf. Apol. 17 D 2-3; Euthyph. 2 A 1-3; Isoc.
VII. 48; Eurip. Orest. 919; Diimmler, Proleg., p. 19.

173 D Even in their dreams: Cf. Eurip. I.T. 518; Apol. 40 D aliter. Cf.
Phileb. 36 E, 65 E.

173 E Through strange seas of thought alone: I have replaced the latent
quotation of Pindar (frag. 292 Chr. apud Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 14, § 98,
p. 707) by an allusion to Wordsworth. Cf. perhaps Rep. 486 A, 496 B, 500 C;
Cic. Tusc. IV. 17.

174 A For falling into a pit: An anecdote endlessly repeated, paraphrased,
and varied in subsequent literature. Cf. Chaucer, Miller s Tale , 11. 3458-60.
Cf. Zeller, 289 n. 2. Cf. Casaubon’s note on Diog. L. 1. 34. Gomperz (III, 350-
51) sees here a counterattack of Plato on Antisthenes.

Rich grandsires: Cf. the statement of Aristotle that nobility is hereditary
wealth.

174E-175A Through twenty-five generations to Heracles: Cf. Isoc. Nic.
42; Herod. VII. 204 on Leonidas. Cf. Per. Sat. VI. 57-59; Juv. Sat. VIII.

578

WHAT PLATO SAID

269 ff., “Malo pater tibi sit Thersites, etc.”; Boethius III. c. 6; Eurip., frag.
53; Seneca Ep. 44, “Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse, etc.” Cf.
Rabelais, “plusieurs sont aujourd’hui empereurs rois dues .... lesquelz sont
descendus de quelques porteurs, etc.”; Lord Chesterfield, “Added to his long
gallery of ancestors a scrubby old man labelled Adam de Stanhope.” Cf.
Blackstone, “And at the 20th degree every man hath above a million an¬
cestors.” Cf. Conklin, The Direction oj Human Evolution , p. 136; John G.
Saxe, The Proud Miss Machride , xv. But cf. Charm. 157-58.

176 A Evil is inevitable: Cf. Ar. Met. 984 b 32, to.vo.vtiq. to'ls a.ya.Oo'is. Mil-
ton s Areopagitica elaborates the commonplace: “Good and evil we know in
the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably, etc.” Cf. Isoc.
Ep. VI. 13. Cf. Gomperz, III, 122. On the problem of evil cf. also Laws
9°3 B ff , 9°5 B 5“6; Eurip. Ion 1017. Boethius IV. 1. 4 and c. 5. Chrysippus
apud Gellium N.A. VII. 1 elaborates the argument of the Theaetetus and Lysis
(221) and quotes Phaedo 60 C. Cf. Zeller, p. 749; von Arnim, Stoics , 11,335 ff-,
Cum ita dicunt: si esset providentia nulla essent mala”; Cudworth, True
Intel. Syst. oj the Universe , I, 345, “To all which may be added, according to
the opinion of many, that there is a kind of necessity of some evils in the world
for a condiment (as it were) to give a relish and haut-goust to good.” On
the whole question of the theory of evil cf. C. M. Chilcott, “The Platonic
Theory of Evil,” Class. Quart., XVII (1923), 27-31 ; Wilhelm Sesemann, “Die
Ethik Platos und das Problem des Bosen,” Philos. Abhandlungen , Hermann
Cohen dargebracht (1912), pp. 170-89.

176 B Become like to God as far as may be: Cf. on Laws 716 A ff., 906 B;
Rep. 501 B, 589 D, 613 B \Phaedr. 273 E (?); Campbell also compares Phaedr.
252 E-253 A; Rep. 500 B; Phaedo 107 C; Tim. 90 B. Cf. Seneca Ep ., 95.50,
“Vis deos propitiare? bonus esto. Satis illos coluit quisquis imitatus est.” Cf.
Loeschhorn, Zur Platonischen u. christlichen Ethik , p. 35. Cf. Tulloch, Ra¬
tional Theology and Christian Philos ., p. 107, “Religion is the being as much
like God as man can be like him.” Here, too, belong passages which define
the end as following God. Cf. Laws 716 B 7, Epict. Diss. I. 12. 5; I. 20. 15,
etc. Cf. also Friedlander, II, 438, 90, 225.

176 D Wicked, to be sure, but smart: Cf. Laws 689 CD; Cic. De offic . I. 19.
Cf. Bernard Shaw, “Most of us are too dull to be anything but good.”

176 D Glory in the reproach: Cf. Thucyd. III. 82. 7; Shorey in TAP A,
XXIV. (1893) 75.

176 D Cianberers oj the earth: Cf. II. XVIII. 104; Apol. 28 D. Cf. Mil-
ton s Many a man lives a burden to this earth, but a good book is the pre¬
cious life blood of a master-spirit.”

176E-177A Pattern oj godless evil: Cf. Laws 728 BC, and Epict. Diss.
I. 12. 22.

177 B No better than children: Cf. Tim. 23 B 5 and Prot. 342 E; Ale. I
122 C 8; Phaedr. 279 A; Ep. IV. 320 C 4.

177 C With a sigh: el ixevroL 8ok6 t.

177 E Purpose . ... the beneficial: Cf. Ar. Rhct. 1358 b, 1362 a ff.

178 A If men err in this forecast: Cf. Rep. I. 339 C; and for references to
the future, 178 B, cf. Ar. Met. 1010 b 12-14.

THEAETETUS— NOTES

579

i79E-i8o A To any intelligible static statement: Cf. on 157 B. Cf. in the
Marinetti futurist program: “Our revolution is directed against the so-called
typographical harmony of the page, which is opposed to the flux and reflux,
.... the infinitive mood will be indispensable because it ... . negatives in
itself the existence of the sentence, and prevents the style from stopping and
sitting down at a fixed point.”

180 C Ourselves the problem: Cf. Ar. Met. 1006 a 13 ff., 1063 a 17 ff.

180 E In a game of pull-azvay: This game called dieXKvaTLPda (a kind of
French and English, tug-of-war or rope-pull) was played for the most part in
the palaestrae. Two groups of young men tugged at the ends of a rope, each
side trying to pull the other over a line drawn between the contesting parties.
The group that succeeded in this was declared the winner. Cf. Pollux IX. 1 12.

181 A Flowing philosophers: Cf. Goethe, Dauer im Wechsel ; Tennyson in
Poems by Two Brothers: “All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, / All
visions wild and strange; / Man is the measure of all truth unto himself. All
truth is change, etc.,” with the note: “Argal — this very opinion is only true
relatively to the flowing philosophers.” Cf. supra on 167 C.

181 C f. Move in both senses of the word: Cf. Cratyl. 439 E ff.; Rep. 380 E
2-3. There is no fallacy as, e.g., Apelt and Olympiodorus affirm. Plato is not
illegitimately converting the proposition “All motion is change.” He is prick¬
ing the bubble of pseudoscientific paradox (cf. Symp. 187 A). If they don’t
push the doctrine to this extreme, there is no self-advertisement in it (180 D).
Cf. 183 A, 1 81 E; cf. also 182 C 10 with Cratyl. 440 A 2.

183 A Rational thought impossible: Cf. 179 E-180 A; Soph. 252 C;
Euthyd. 286 C, 288 A, 303 E; Parmen. 135 B 8, 161 A 3, 164 A 7. Cf. Shorey,
Diss.y p. 9, n. 2. So Ar. Met. 1008 a 20 fF. Cf. 1007 b 25, 1012 a 26 with
Phaedo 72 C; Gorg . 465 D.

184 A Lest he misapprehend him: Cf. the sometimes fanciful reflections
of Pater, Plato and Platonism , chap, ii, “Plato and the doctrine of rest.” Cf.
Ar. Met. 986 b 28; Phys. 185 a 10, 186 a 8.

184 D Like the Greeks in the wooden horse: Plato rejects the psychology
of Condillac’s statue. Cf. Zeller, p. 661, the soul is not an idea; Paulsen, “Seele
ist die auf nichtwiedersagbare Weise zur Einheit verbundene Vielheit innerer
Erlebnisse”; Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria , p. 61, n. 1, “The passions
were conceived of in Stoic fashion as actual bodies hanging on to the soul, the
tt pocr apry par a or w poa<j>vys faxy- Man thus becomes, says Clement, a kind of
Trojan Horse, Strojn. ii. 20, 1 12 sqq.” Cf. Tim . 35 A for els piap .... I8eav.

184 D Call it soul or what you will: Cf. on Crito 47 E; Symp. 218 A. Cf.
Rousseau, Profession defoi du Vicaire Savoyard: “qu’on donne tel ou tel nom
a cette force de mon esprit qui rapproche et compare mes sensations, etc.”
For 184 C, to 8Z evxepls tup opoparuPy cf. on Meno 87 BC. Cf. Soph. 220 D;
Polit . 259 C, 261 E; Euthyd. 285 A; Charm. 163 D 5; supra , 165 A; Cic. Tusc.
I. 20.

184 C But through them: cf. Blake’s “We are led to believe a lie/ when we
see with, not through, the eye”; Rupert Brooke, “And see, no longer blinded
by our eyes”; Lucret. contra III. 359 ff.; Cic. Tusc . I. 86; Sextus Empir. Adv.

WHAT PLATO SAID

580

dogmat. I. 350. Cf. Phaedo 83 A 4 for the phrase. Sir John Davies, “Yet in
the body’s prison so she lies / As through the body’s windows she must look.”

185 CD Reality and future benefit: Plato here seems to anticipate the mod¬
ern topic of judgments of value.

185 DE Common: Hence Aristotle’s kolvtj aiaOrjais hopelessly confounded
with the vovs. Jowett’s “from reflection on herself” (IV, 154) reads Locke into
Plato.

185 DE Has no material organ: Cf. the modern assertion that conscious¬
ness (Munsterberg) or meaning (McDougall) have no material organ; “We
cannot assume,” says McDougall, “that meaning has any immediate physi¬
cal correlate among the brain processes.” Cf. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees ,
II, 175, “So that all we can know of this Consciousness is, that it consists in,
or is the Result of, the running and rummaging of the Spirits through all the
Mazes of the Brain, and their looking there for Facts concerning ourselves.”

187 C ff. What is false opinion: Cf. Euthyd . 284 A, 286 C; Cratyl. 429 D;
Soph. 236 E.

1896 Embraces the new idea: Cf. supra , 157 D, 162 CD, 187 C; infra,
194 B, 195 B and D, 202 D, 203 E, 205 A, 207 CD, 208 E.

189 E Discourse of the soul with itself: I.e., Parole interieure. Cf. supra,
170 D; Phileb. 38 C-E; Soph. 263 E. Cf. the Stoic X070S evdiaOeros. Cf. per¬
haps also Rep. 437 C (Loeb); Ar. De an. 434 a 9. Remy de Gourmont attrib¬
utes the idea to Rivarol. Webb {Studies in History of Natural Theology , p.
170) says, “The representation of thought as an inner discourse remounts to
Plato though no doubt it was immediately derived by Anselm from Augus¬
tine.” The developments of the idea in modern psychology and its applica¬
tions in modern fiction would take us too far.

190 C The Greek word erepov: kareov (C 8) is often mistranslated. It
means “You must allow the use of the [ambiguous] word erepov.” In English
roughly: “Did you ever say one thing is another? You too must allow the
word ‘another’ in its application to particulars. For literally and verbally
‘another’ is the same as ‘another.’ ” Cf. Alice’s ‘jam every other day.’ Cf. on
Euthyd. 301 B and on Lysis 216 B 1, €vclvtiwtcltov. Cf. Friedlander, II, 447.

191 CD A lump or block of wax: {kitpayeiov) . Cf. Alcin., Hermann, VI,
1 54—55. Cf. 6K pay eiov of space in Tim. 50 C 2, 72 C {Laws 800 E: mold).
Cf. James, Psychology, 1, 659-60: “Some minds are like wax under a seal, ....
no impression however disconnected with others is wiped out. Others like a
jelly vibrate to every touch, etc.” Similarly Locke and many others. Pear,
Remembering and Forgetting, pp. 3-4: “The different processes of impression,
retention, and recall may be illustrated if the function of memory be com¬
pared with that of the gramophone.” Cf. also the book in Phileb. 38 E-39 A,
and the collections of Stoelzel, p. 96: Ar. De an. 424 a 17; Diog. L. VII. 45;
Sextus Adv. math. VII. 228-30, Cic. Tusc. I. 61 ; Prantl, Gesch. d. Log., Ill,
261, for tabula rasa in the Middle Ages; Zeller, p. 300.

191 D Mother of the Muses: Euthyd. 275 D; Tennyson, Ode to Memory;
Hes. Theog. 54; Aeschyl. Prom. 461.

193 B Elimination of all ... . impossible combinations: Error is impossi¬
ble: (1) between things known (both or one or neither) but not perceived by

THEAETETUS— NOTES

581

sense; (2) between things not known when we perceive one or both or neither;
(3) between things known and perceived when knowledge and perception of
each are properly identified; (4) when one is known and perceived by sense
and the knowledge of it is identified with the sensation; (5) between things
both or either of which we neither know nor perceive. For this exhaustive
method cf. Lysis 213 C, 216 E; Ale. I 118A, 130 C; Symp. 196 D; Polit.
270 A; Theaet. 188 A, 193 D ff.; Rep. 380 D, 428 A, 432 B, 433 B 3; Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1106 a 11, Topics 101 b 4 ff., 159 b 36 ff., Soph. El. 165 b 13, 170 a 10,
and passim.

193 C 4 Recognition of it ?nay take place: A playful allusion to Electra’s
“recognition” in the Choephoroi 197 ff., of Orestes by the resemblance of his
footprints to her own. Cf. Rep. 462 A.

195 E Five and seven are eleven: Cf. Rep. 526 A. Cf. Spencer on Mill vs.
Hamilton, “The Test of Truth,” Essays , Morale pp. 392, 394.

197 D ff. An aviary: Cf. Euthyd. 291 B. Cf. James, Psychology , I, 338,
“Wild animals lassoed .... and thus owned for the first time.”

197 D Through all the others: Cf. Soph. 253 D, 254 B, where the general
meaning is plain but the precise interpretation of the language is disputed.

197 B To possess it: The Aristotelian e£is vs. Krrjais found already in
Soph. Antig. 1277.

200 An Brings us round once more to the puzzle with which we began: Cf.
on Charm. 174 B 11, and Pater on Parmenides’ to6l yap iraKiv l^opai avdts,
Plato and Platonism, p. 32, “Yes truly, again and again in an empty circle we
may say, etc.” Cf. Fitzgerald, Omar Khayyam , “. . . . but evermore / Came
out by the same door where in I went,” with Boethius Cons. Phil. III. xii,
“Nunc vero quo introieris egrediare.”

The fact of error is certain: Cf. Preserved Smith, History of Modern Cul¬
ture , 1, 1 91, “But, having postulated a divine guarantee of the trustworthiness
of our mental processes, at this point Descartes had to explain how error at
all is possible — for that errors exist can not successfully be denied by the most
resolute optimist.”

Malebranche and the behaviorists: Cf. A. E. Eddington, Science and the Un¬
seen World (1929), “Now the thought of seven times nine in a boy’s mind is
not seldom succeeded by the thought of 65. What has gone wrong? ....
However closely we may associate thought with the physical machinery of the
brain, the connection is dropped as irrelevant as soon as we consider the fun¬
damental property of thought — that it may be correct or incorrect. The ma¬
chinery cannot be anything but correct.” Cf. Shorey, Unity (1903), pp. 66-67.
Cf. supra , pp. 297-98.

201 B Known only by seeing them: It is captious to take this as an admis¬
sion that after all sense perception is knowledge. Cf. Plaut. True. 489-90,
“Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auriti decern. / Qui audiunt audita di-
cunt, qui vident plane sciunt.” For the purpose of his illustration Plato speaks
from the plane of “common sense.” Cf. on Gorg. 458 A.

A good definition: There is no contradiction with Meno 98 A; Symp. 202 A;
and Phaedo 96 B. Plato does not intend to “define” knowledge, but he is care¬
ful not to contradict the practical description of it given in the Republic .

582

WHAT PLATO SAID

201 D ff. Author of the theory : The theory has been attributed to Antis-
thenes. Cf. Wil., I, 262; Zeller, 294, n. 1; Friedlander, II, 453, n. i: Bonitz,
Platon . Studien , p. 88, n. 52; Stallbaum-Wohlrab, Proleg., p. 31 ; Joel, Der
echte und Xenoph. Sokrates , II, 936. Cf. Unity , n. 551, and p. 17. In any case
Plato's treatment of it is satirical. Cf. 201 D 4, 201 D 9, 202 A 8 = the
Xup'^eiv paradox of the Sophist'll D 9. Cf. also Parmen. 164 A. Cf. 202 D 9,
Kojixl/oTara. Cf. 203 D 10, 203 E 8-9.

205 C 2 The syllable (compound) is not the composition of its elements:
Cf. Parmen. 145 A-E, 153 D, 157 D; Thomson, Science and Religion , p. 185,
“Out of three sounds, as Browning says, there is framed, ‘not a fourth sound
but a star.' ”

References . ... in Aristotle: Ar. Met. 993 a 5, 1041 b 13, 995 b 29, 1014 a
30, 1034 b 26, 1041 a 12, etc.

Modern writers: Cf. Follett, Creative Experience , pp. 92 and 98, “Many
writers of the Gestalt school say that the whole is ‘more’ than its constituent
parts"; Bridgman, Logic of Modern Physics , p. 220; Stout, Analytic Psychol -
ogy, I, 61 ; ibid., II, 20; Miinsterberg, Business Psychology, p. 268, “The num¬
ber of words which can be grasped in one such pulse-beat of attention is al¬
most as large as the number of single letters which can be attended at the
same time. E. S. Robinson, Readings in General Psychology , p. 228, “. . . . Fi¬
nally it was found that a short word was seen as easily as a single letter";
Wundt, Outlines of Psychology , pp. 69-70, “Psychologically there is no justi¬
fication for calling any light sensations compound in comparison with others";
cf. ibid., p. 83; Cole, Psychology , p. 55, “This conception of Wundt’s is a fore¬
runner of the present theory of emergent evolution, etc."; ibid., p. 56; Dewey,
Experience, p. 143; James, op. cit., I, 160, 155, 15 1, 145; Spencer, Psychology ,
I> 379> § "A word made up of a dozen letters comes eventually to be rec¬
ognized as quickly as a single letter."

208 C 5 Mirroring of thought in speech: Cf. Ar. Be interp . 16 a 3 ff.;
Horace A.P. hi.

208 D Heavenly bodies that circle the earth: Cf. Ar. Topics 131 b 25 ff.;

Cic. De nat. deor. II. § 68, “. . . . Sol dictus sit, vel quia solus . " On defi¬

nition by isolation cf. Meno 75 B, Charm. 166 E. Cf. Mill on Hamilton, I,
106, “We never have an adequate conception of any real thing. But we have
a real conception of an object if we conceive it by any of its attributes that
are sufficient to distinguish it from all other things."

209 D Convert our opinion into knowledge: These refinements suggest one
of the chief problems of the Aristotelian definition as debated throughout the
Middle Ages. In what if any sense is there a “form” or definition of the
individual as opposed to the species? From the Platonic point of view the
theory thus rejected implies a recurrence to the original identification of
knowledge with sense perception.

Their definitive psychology: Cf. Unity, p. 66, n. 519. “We cannot suppose
that Plato conceived a definition of knowledge to be impossible," says Jowett.
But it is impossible and that for the very reasons suggested by Plato. What is
the (non-tautologous) definition of “knowledge"?

PARMENIDES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O., Beitrdge zurGesch. d. gr. Philosophies pp. i— 66. Leipzig, 1891.

Brochard, V., Etudes de philos. ancienne et de phil. moderney PP* 113-50.
Paris, 1912.

Dies, A., Platon , “ ParmSnide ” (Bud6), VIII, Part I, vi-xix, 1-53.

- , “Le probleme de Pun et du multiple avant Platon,” Rev. d'histoire

de la philosophies I (1927), 5-22.

Dodds, E. R., “The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic
‘One/ ” Class. Quarts XXII (1928), 129-42.

Dyroff, A., “Zu Platons Parmenides” Festschrift f. M. Schanzy pp. 83-158.

Eberz, J., “Die Einkleidung des Plat. Parmenides ,” Archiv.f. Gesch. d. Philos
XX, 81-95.

Friedlander, II, 460-84.

Grote, G., PlatOs HI (1888), 56-109.

Hoffding, H., Bemerkungen iiber d. Plat. Dialog “ Parmenides ” (“Bibliothek
f. Philos.,” 21). Berlin, 1921.

Mackay, D. S., Mind in the “Parmenides” ; a Study in the History of Logic.
Los Angeles, 1924. Cf. Shoreys review, Philos. Rev.y XXXV (1926), 190-
91.

Maguire, Th., The “Parmenides” of Plato. London, 1882.

More, P. E., “The Parmenides of Plato,” Philos. Rev.y XXV (1916), 121-42.

Natorp, pp. 221-78.

Raeder, pp. 297-317.

Ritchie, D., Surle “Parmenide” de Platon dans sa relation aux critiques aris-
toteliennes de la thSorie des ideesy “Biblioth. du Congres Intern, de Philos.,”
IV, 163-88.

Ritter, II, 63-96; Platons Dialogey pp. 1-24.

Schmitfranz, P., “Die Gestalt der Plat. Ideenlehre in den Dialogen Par¬
menides und Sophistesy” Philos. Jahrb.y XXVI (1913), 125-45.

Schneidewin, M., “Ein Versuch iiber die Ratsel des Plat. Parmenides ,”
Neue Jahrb.f. d. kl. Alt.y XIX (1916), 379-401.

Shorey, P., “On Parmenides 162 A, B,” Amer. Jour. Phil.y XII (1891),

349-53*

- , “Note on Parmenides 129-30,” Class. Phil., XXVI (1931), 91-93.

- , Unity , pp. 57 ff.

- , Diss.y p. 10, n. 1.

- , “Recent Platonism,” 285-94.

Taylor, pp. 349-7°*

Waddell, W., The “Parmenides” of Plato. Glasgow, 1894.

Wahl, J., Etude sur le “ParmSnide” de Platon . Paris, 1926.

583

WHAT PLATO SAID

584

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 5II-I3; II, 221-29.

Zeller, E., “Ueber die Composition des Parmenides und seine Stellung in
der Reihe der Platonischen Dialogen,” Plat. Studien, pp. 157-96. Tubin¬
gen, 1839.

- , Philo sopliie der Griechen , II, I4, 650 ff.

NOTES

Abrupt juxtaposition: There is quite a literature of the attempts to connect
them. Cf. Otto Apelt, Parmenides , pp. 22-23. Cf. Wahl, pp. 8-9, 42, “que la
deuxieme partie du dialogue doive lever la difficulte.” Cf. p. 45. Cf. Fried-
lander, II, 460, n. 1. Perhaps 135 BC is a sufficient connection.

Arid dialectic: Not to be confused with the genuine Platonic dialectic with
which Haldane and many others have identified it (Haldane, The Pathway to
Reality , II, 67).

Formulated by Damascius: De princip. 2, p. 4, 9 f., Ruelle, XV. 23 f. Cf.
Parmen. 161 A3; Soph. 239 B.

Herbert Spencer: E.g., First Principles, p. 21, “The utter incomprehensible¬
ness of the simplest fact considered in itself” (Plato's x^pk)* Cf. Unity , p. 59,
n. 439.

126 B Pythodorus: Cf. Ale. I 119 A. Pythodorus, the son of Isolochus
was general from 426 to 424 b.c. He was sent to Sicily as successor of Laches
to help the allied cities (Thuc. III. 1 15. 2; IV. 2. 2.) He was recalled in 424
and sent into exile. Cf. Kirchner, Prosop ., No. 12399; Friedlander, II, 461,
n. 4; Apelt, p. 221.

126 C Parmenides of Elea: Cf. Theaet. 152 E, 180 E, 183 E; Sytnp. 178 B;
Soph. 216 A, 237 A, 241 D, 242 C, 244 E, 258 C.

126 C Zeno: Cf. Soph. 216 A; Phaedr. 261 D; Ale. I 119 A.

129 DE In the realm of pure ideas: Cf. 144 E, 158 C 2, 165 A 8, The one
itself is many. Cf. 140 A; Phileb. 15 B; Rep. 476; and perhaps Soph. 251 B.
Cf. “Recent Platonism,” p. 286. Cf. 131 C 5 with Tim. 35 A. It is fanciful
to find the Aristotelian categories here. Stenzel ( Dialektik , p. 32) forgets Rep.
476 and misapplies Rep. 525 DE.

130 B If he himself draws: Cf. Class. Phil., XXVI (1931), 93, and Phaedr.
263 B 7.

130 CD Ideas of all things: That is quite certainly the Platonic doctrine,
for the reasons suggested by Socrates himself (130 D 5-6) and Parmenides
(130 E) and by the testimony of the dialogues. Cf. my Diss., pp. 23-25;
Unity, pp. 28-29; AJP, X, 57-58.

The hypostatization of the concept is irrational and meaningless unless all
concepts are hypostatized. All limitations of the Platonic ideas to dignified
or to natural and non-manufactured objects are arbitrary sentimentalities not
justified by Plato’s texts or his intentions. Wherever the mind apprehends a
ra vrov (130 D 6; Soph. 249 B, 251 A 6, 253 CD; Phileb. 34 E; Tim. 83 C) there
is a concept. (Cf. supra, p. 458.) And though for practical purposes the con¬
cept suffices, whenever we think as metaphysicians, the concept points to an
idea. The youthful Socrates’ first shrinking from this conclusion is merely

PARMENI DES— NOTES

585

Plato’s anticipation of the charge of paradox. The only problem is the pre¬
cise point at which the hypostatization of the concept as the idea emerges in
the “earlier” Platonic dialogues. Cf. Shorey in Sixth International Congress of
Philosophy , p. 578.

Irrelevant is the fact that even before Plato in Thucydides and Greek medi¬
cal writers and even in Herodotus and after Plato in the feeble imitations of
Isocrates (cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., VI [1911], 363) the word idea vaguely
used for aspect, type, kind, species, may be regarded as an approximation to
the concept. Plato himself can use the word in this loose way ( Phaedr . 237 D
6). Why not? The Platonic and Xenophontic Socrates approaches the con¬
cept by asking what each thing really is (Xen. Mem. IV. 6. 1. Cf. Phaedr.
238 D 8). Cf. my note in Class. Phil., XX (1925), 347.

130 DE Dignity of the object: Cf. Soph. 227 B; Polit. 226 D; Phileb. 58 C;
Hipp. Maj. 288 D; Laws 793 C 7; Rep. 402 BC (Loeb); Rep. 485 B with
Parmen. 130 E 4. Ar., frag. 52 (Teubner, pp. 58-59); Met. 983 a 10; Shorey,
Diss., p. 24, n. 6. Cf. Campbell, Introd. to Theaet ., p. liii; William James,
Memories and Studies, p. 188, “Scientific men have long ago ceased to think
of the dignity of the materials they work in.” Cf. Aristotle on Heraclitus*
saying, “Here too are gods,” Part An. 1. 5. 645 a 5 ff.; Zeller Ar. (Eng.) 1. 167.

130E-131 A What metaphors: Cf. Ar. Met. 991 a 22; infra, 132 D.

131 A 5, 131 C 6 To participate: /zeraX^ts .... ner'exoi . Cf. 158 A 4-6,
160 E 8; Soph. 255 B, 256 A. All attempts to determine the stages of Plato’s
development by the use of differing metaphors to express the relation of par¬
ticulars to the idea have broken down. Cf. on Soph . 256 B; Shorey, Diss.
(1884), p. 40; “Recent Platonism,” pp. 279 ff.; Zeller, Sitzungsber. Berl.
Akad. (1887), pp. 198-220.

131 AB Its apartness and its unity: For the tt apovaLa problem cf. infra,
150 A, 1 61, where, however, the word is not used. Cf. on Phaedo 100 D 5-6,
and on Charm. 158 E. For “apart from itself” cf. Soph. 245 C.

132 A Assume another idea: For this so-called “third man” argument cf.
Rep. 597 C; Tim. 31 A; AJP, X, 49; Grote, III, 64, n. 1; Diss., p. 30; Unity,
p. 36, n. 244; Zeller, 259, i; 7445 745, Ar- Met. I. 9. 990 b 15 ff.; Ar. Soph.
El. 179 a 3; L. Robin, La theorie platonicienne des idees et des nombres, pp. 21-
22; 609 ff. with literature; F. Goblot, “L’argument du troisieme homme chez
Platon,” Revue Thistoire de la philosophic, III (1929), 473 ff.; Otto Apelt,
Parmenides, pp. 24 f., 138; Stenzel, Dialektik, p. 31; Novotny , Plato's Epistles,
p. 65. Cf. Balfour on idealism in Foundations of Belief, “But if such a subject
and such a world cannot be conceived without postulating some higher unity
in which their differences shall vanish and be dissolved. God himself would
require some yet higher deity to explain his existence.”

132 B Only a concept of or in the mind: Not really relevant are Rep. 484
C 7-8; Soph. 250 B 7; Polit. 258 C 7. All Platonic ideas are concepts and may
be treated as such when metaphysics is not the issue. It does not follow that
they are ever in Plato’s intention no more than concepts. Cf. Unity, p. 30;
Zeller, p. 664; and the whole literature about Natorp’s Platons Ideenlehre.

132 B A concept of something: Cf. Zeller, p. 668; Meyerson, Deduction
Relativiste, p. 40, “M. Lodge ... declare de meme: Des ondes doivent etre

WHAT PLATO SAID

586

des ondes de quelquechose”; Dewey, Experience , p. 189. Cf. Whitehead, Con -
cept of Nature , p. 96. “There must be something to be responded to, if there
is to be any response,” writes a recent psychologist.

On the whole subject cf. further Zeller, pp. 649-52. Cf. Porphyry’s trea¬
tise, on efco too vov v^earrjKe to. (Fit. Plot § 18). Cf. also Theaet. 180 E,
1 81 B, 183 E; Soph. 242 D; my Diss., p. 20, n. 1.

132 C Metaphysical problems: 132 C 10 leads to Aristotle’s vbrjais vorjo'ecos.
Cf. AJP , XXII (1901), 1 6 1 . Cf. James’s attempt to evade the problem ( Psy¬
chology , I, 341).

132 D The ideas are patterns: Cf. my Diss ., pp. 28-29; Zeller, p. 764; Ar.
Met. 991 a 21-22. Cf. also on Euthyphro 6 E, and on Polit. 277 D, infra , p. 613.
In nature: Cf. Rep. 597 C 2.

134 D God cannot know particulars: Ar. De an. 410 b 5 turns this argu¬
ment against Empedocles. Cf. Met. II. 4. 1000 b 5; De an. I. 5. 410 b 6. Cf.
Webb, Studies in Hist, of Natural Theology , p. 249. Cf. Shorey, AJP , IX,
287-88. If God does not know particulars he in a sense knows only himself,
which would be Aristotle’s vorjats vorjaews. Cf. Ross, Ar., p. 187.

x35 C Dialectics: Cf. Phileb. 57 E 6-7, Phaedr. 2 66 C 1 ; and on Phileb.
58 D, Laws 9 66 C, and Charm. 155 A.

# *35 C Become impossible: Cf. Rep. 532 D, hard to accept and hard to
reject. Cf. Soph. 250 C 9, 252 C; Theaet. 183 B, 179 Ef.; Euthyd. 286 C,
288 A, 303 E I; Shorey, Diss., p. 9.

135 BC Mouthpiece of Plato himself: Cf. Symp. 186-87 with Phileb.
25 E 7, which seems to prove that the idea in the Symposium is Plato’s and
not the speaker’s. Cf. Charm. 164 E, which is Plato rather than Critias; Gorg.
51 1 B, where Callicles is out of character in saying that the fact that a bad
man slays a good one is the very thing that makes one indignant. Cf. Laches
195 E (Pohlenz, p. 37), where Laches is made a free-thinker about prophecy;
Prot. 325 A, where Protagoras talks like Socrates in Phaedo 69 AB. Cf. Laws
858 B C. Cf. Friedlander, I, 104 on Symp. 216 C. Cf. also Phaedo 96 C;
Theaet. 167 D; Soph. 239 B, 247 B 7; Symp. 179 D ff.

x35 C As is his constant endeavor: Is Plato here criticizing Socrates?

135 E Work out all the consequences: Cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico
philosophicus, p. 66, “Einen Satz verstehen heisst wissen was der Fall ist
wenn er wahr ist.”

i35~36 Neo-Platonists: So Emerson, the student of the neo-Platonists:
“He called it superessential. He even stood ready to demonstrate that it was
so — that this Being exceeded the limits of the intellect.”

Objections: Cf. Unity , pp. 36-37.

Not the slightest evidence: Cf. Shorey, AJP, IX, 285-94.

Conscious exercise in logic: The fallacies then are intentional. Cf. Rhein.
Mus., L, 450. Cf. Fouillee, La philosophic de Platon, I, 207, “Le Parmenide est
un grand “jeu” logique, ... mais ... recouvre un travail vraiment ontologique
... ”; Bury, “The Later Platonism,” Jour. Phil., XXIII, 162, “The Parmeni¬
des is void of all real content, and serves merely as an exercise in logical meth¬
od; so Schleiermacher, Ast, Herbart, Hegel ( Vorrede z. Logik I. xxii), and
others”; Victor Brochard, La theorie de la participation d'apres le “ Parmenide ”

PARMENIDES— NOTES

587

et le “ Sophiste ,” p. 3. We need not fancy with Wilamowitz that it was a book
of exercises for Plato’s students. Cf. Kurt Singer, Platon der Gruender , p. 188.

With “is” referring to real existence: Cf. supra, p. 298.

Points of agreement with the Sophist are too numerous: Cf. infra on Sophist ,
p. 592 f., Shorey, Diss. (i884),pp. 39 ff., “De Parmenide atque Sophista ”; “Re¬
cent Platonism,” pp. 287, 291 ff.; Unity , p. 58. Cf. Bude, Sophist , pp. 284-85:
“Mais l’esprit de la demonstration est le meme dans le Sophiste que dans le
Parmenide. ... La refutation qui ne pouvait etre qu’esquissee et adombree dans
le Parmenide, et que Platon n’avait meme pas voulu ebaucher dans le Theetit-
te.” Cf. Unity , p. 55, “Hence it is perfunctorily dismissed in a page, etc.”

Out of his way in cold storage: Cf. supra , 135 B. Cf. Phileb. 16 A 8. Mill
(IV, 285-86) rightly sees that the Philebus repeats the Parmenides but says
after Grote that Plato does not apply to his own theories the tests to which he
subjects the views of others. Mill forgets his own acceptance of the “inexpli¬
cable fact,” etc. (on Hamilton , I, 261-62). Cf. supra, p. 284. Cf. Bury, review
of A. W. Benn, The Greek Philosophers , Class. Rev., XXX (1915), 21.

As Aristotle did in his “Metaphysics” : Cf. Shorey, Diss., pp. 5-6, 30; re¬
view of Jaeger, Ar. Met., Class. Phil., VIII (1913), 235 ff.

Postulates of common sense: Cf. supra, pp. 302, 304.

Over this dialogue: Bury on “Later Platonism,” pp. 161 ff., gives a useful
summary of discussions to the year 1895. Cf. also Shorey, Diss., pp. 22 ff.;
Unity, pp. 34, 36, 37, 57 ff.; AJP , IX, 285-94; Shorey, review of Levi, Sulle
interpretazione unmancntistiche della filosojia di Platone, Class. Phil., XXII
(1927), hi, “He rejects as I do and as he rightly points out Pico di Miran-
dola did, the metaphysical interpretation of the Parmenides, though he will
not go all the length of the opinion which he attributes to me, that it is nothing
but a logical exercitation.”

In the “Sophist”-. Cf. Shorey, Diss., pp. 41 fi.\AJP, IX, 185, 190 ff.; Unity,
pp. 58-60.

Manner of the “Sophist”: Cf. Natorp, Archiv, XII (1899), 1-49, 159-86.
In Ritter’s chronological list based on Sprachstatistik ( Platon , I, 255), the
Parmenides comes twentieth, immediately after the Theaetetus and before the
Sophist; in that of von Arnim ( Sitzungsber . der Kais. Akademie der Wissen-
schaften in Wien, Philosophisch-Hist. Klasse, Band CLXIX, Abh. 3, p. 234),
it is nineteenth, following the Theaetetus but preceding the Phaedrus, which
is put between the Parmenides and the Sophist.

The more significant: Both the Theaetetus and the Sophist allude to a meet¬
ing between Socrates and Parmenides ( Theaet . 183 E; Soph, 'ii’i C). Either
allusion might precede or follow the actual composition of the Parmenides,
though the second alternative is perhaps the more probable. Cf. Natorp, Ar¬
chiv, XII, 291, 163.

As mere eristic: Phaedr. 261 DE; Soph. 259. Cf. Cratyl. 414 D 9.

And “other”: Cf. Soph. 259 D.

Knows the trick: Cf. Soph. 259 C; Parmen. 159 A 7-8; and Socrates’ con¬
gratulations to the Sophists in the Euthydemus on the ease with which Ctesip-
pus picked up their method (303 E).

Arguments and expressions: E.g., the quibble, Parmen. 147 D ff. (of which

WHAT PLATO SAID

588

Alice’s “jam every other day” is the only English analogue), that the “other”
is the “same” because the word erepov in Greek idiom applies to both, and the
word must refer to the same essence. This is parodied by Socrates in Euthyd.
301 B, and explained in Theaet. 190 C, eireibi) to pi} pa erepov tw erepco /card
prjpa ravrov eoriv. The extension of this reasoning to the avopoioTarov is
deprecated as eristic in Phileb. 13 D. T\io Parmenides, 148 A, infers that /car’
avrd tovto airav airacn opoiov av etrj. Now, it is precisely the function of de¬
ceptive rhetoric ttolv iravTidpoLovv, Phaedr. 261 E; Prot. 331 D, /cat 7ap6rto9i'
orcpovv apfj 7e 7Tfl irpooeoucev. And it is precisely this that the Sophist , 259 D,
and the Philebus , 13 A, stigmatize as eristic. Similarly, the antinomies of
whole and part in 137 CD, 144 E, 145 E, 157 E, 159 CD, recall Theaet . 204,
205 and Soph. 245. On rest and motion cf. 139 B with Soph. 250 C; 146 A,
156 E, 162 E with 255 E, Theaet. 181-83.

These absolute antinomies: Cf. Soph. 249 CD. For the negation of all in¬
telligible thought and speech which they involve cf. I42A, 164 B; Soph.
248 C; Theaet. 157 B.

Being and not-being: Soph. 258-59, Rep. 436-37, 479 BC, Theaet. 167 A,
Euthyd. 284, 286 C, are sufficient proof that it is not seriously meant.

135 D, 136 DE Of the uninitiated: This is one source of the fancy that
Plato has a secret doctrine. Cf. on Phileb ., infra , p. 607, and Phaedo 61 D.

The Euthydemus hints that listening to eristic may be a useful discipline.
Cf. supra , p. 168.

Terms in human logic: Cf. infra , pp. 592-93.

“/j” and “is not ” must be taken: Cf. 137 D 3, 142 C 2-3, 157 C 1-3, 159 B
6-8, 160 C 4-6. Cf. Soph. 237 B; 160 E 7-9, 163 C 2-3 (cf. Ar. Met. 1004 a

J5)-

Relation or ynultiplicity: Cf. Soph., infra , pp. 594-95.

“ Good is good,r: Soph. 251 B C; 251 E, 259 E, Theaet. 201 E, 202 A. The
friends of ideas, Soph. 248 A (cf. 246 B, 248 E), represent not so much a par¬
ticular school as a generalized tendency of thought. They are literal-minded
Platonists or Eleatics who introduce into logic Plato’s (and perhaps Par¬
menides’) poetical or religious absolutism. Plato’s criticism is not a recanta¬
tion of “earlier” Platonism, for their dogma in Soph. 248 A ff. is precisely
what Plato himself says from another point of view in Tim. 38 A. Cf. on
Philebus , infra, p. 605.

Eight or nine: The third, 155 E, stands by itself. It is in some sort a rec¬
onciliation of the contradictions of the first two, and, by implication, of all.
Cf. infra, p. 589.

137 C-142 A Time , or number: Similar results follow for raXXa from tak¬
ing tv x°>pis and without parts 159 B-160 A.

"141 E 10 Say that it is: ovb’ apa ovtcos eoTiv chore ev elvai. Damascius says
that Plato does not negate ev of ev, but Simplicius (. Phys ., p. 88, 1. 32), con¬
tradicts him.

163 C, 164 B With a similar result: ovtoj brj ev ovk ov ovk exet 7rcos ovbapfj.
Cf. Soph. 239 B and supra, pp. 298-99.

144 B Divided up: Cf. 144 C 6—7 ; Soph. 245, 256 DE, 258 DE.

PARMENIDES— NOTES

589

144 E 5-6 Can conceive: Cf. 143 E; Rep. 525 E, however, points out that
mathematical thought, e.g., must restore the abstract unity as fast as analysis
divides it. Cf. Class. Phil., XXII (1927), 214-J 5. This necessary postulate of
mathematics is no “contradiction” of the metaphysical antinomy. For the
use of neppanfa here and in the Parmenides cf. Soph. 258 E.

160 C And something differe?it: oti erepov \eyei rd prj ov ... . Kal topev

6 \ey 6L.

162 A That prj ov ean : 8ei apa avro Seapov exeiv rod pi] elv at to elv at pi] ov.
For the indispensable emendation of what follows, adopted by Burnet in the
Oxford text, see my note in AJP , XII, 349 ff. Cf. Soph. 259 B 1.

Into the relative hypotheses: E.g., in 149E-150 the denial of communion
between the ideas, or between the ideas and things: ov8e tl ecrrat opiKpov
Tr\r)V avrrjs apLKporrjTOS.

Of all the others: Some deny this.

156 D 5-E 1 Outside of time altogether: Cf. Laches 198 D, Tim. 38 AB.
Cf. also Symp. 21 1 AB and Tim. 52 CD. Cf. Hoffding, pp. 33“ 47; N- H.art‘
mann, Platos Logik des Seins , pp. 355-56; Siegfried March, Die Platonische
Ideenlehre in ihren Motiven , p. 107; Dyroff, p. 141.

Zenonian problem of change: See my Diss., pp. 44-46. Cf. Sir Oliver Lodge,
Continuity , p. 28, “It jumps from one of these conditions to another without
passing through a continuous series of intermediate conditions.” Cf. Hoff¬
ding, Phil. Problems , p. 102, “The single instant in which on the one side
stands a no more, on the other side a not yet, presents the problem in its
whole intensity, an intensity which only the numbing power of custom can
lessen.” Cf. Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic , pp. 81-84.

Outside of space and time: Cf. Tim. 50 C, where they enter into space in
some inexplicable fashion.

SOPHIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O., PI. Aufsdtze , pp. 238-90; Platonis “ Sophista.” Leipzig, 1897.
Bonitz, Plat. Stud., pp. 152-209.

Bury, R. G., “The Later Platonism, II: The Sophist Jour. Phil., XXIII
(1895), 186-201.

Campbell, L., “ Sophistes ” and “ Politicus ” of Plato. Oxford, 1867.

Dies, A., Le “ Sophiste ” de Platon (Bude, VIII, Part 3). Paris, 1925. La de¬
finition de Vetre et la nature des idees dans le “6*.” de Platon. Paris, 1909.
Friedlander, II, 505-37.

Grote, III, 185-259.

Horn, Plat. Stud., N.F., pp. 300-357.

Lukas, F., Die Methode der Einteilung bei Plato, pp. 144-217. Halle, 1888.
Natorp, pp. 278-312.

Raeder, pp. 3I7-37-

Ritter, Platon, II, 185-258; Pl.s Dialoge , pp. 25-43; Neue Untersuchungen
iiber Platon, 1-65.

Rougier, L., “La correspondance des genres du S., du Philebe et du Timee ,”
Archio f. Gesch. d. Philos., XXVII (1914), 305-34.

Shorey, P., “Plato Sophist 255 C and to bicoov,” Class. Phil., XXV (1930),
80.

- , Unity , pp. 50 ff.

- , Diss., pp. 39-53.

- , “Recent Platonism,” pp. 305-7.

Taylor, pp. 371-92.

Wilamowitz, I, 559-72.

NOTES

The “dialectical” dialogues: I use the term here of the Sophist and States¬
man. It is often used to include the Theaetetus and Parmenides and even the
mainly ethical Philebus.

217 D Theaetetus as assenting respondent: Theaetetus makes some good
points but not as many as in the Theaetetus. C f. Campbell on 217 D; Parmen.
137 B 6-8; Wilamowitz (I, 507) wrongly attributes to Theaetetus ignorance
of the difference between definition and example at 239 D. Theaetetus is mere¬
ly appealing to common sense. Cf. on 240 A.

Richer in thought than in wit: 222 A 9, 239 B, 223 B, 268 CD, 224 C,
224 D.

217 AB What is the definition of each? What is the thing: Note that Plato
uses irpaypa and epyov interchangeably. For the triplet cf. Laws 895 DE, 963
E-64 A; Ep. VII, 342 B; Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning.

590

SOPHIST— NOTES

59i

The “Philosopher” was never written: But cf. infra, 231 A ff., 249 B, 253 C
8 ff. There is a considerable literature of conjecture. Cf. Zeller. C46 n. 2;
Ueberw.-Pr., p. 285; 89*.

Seek definitions but always unsuccessfully: Cf. supra , p. 71.

219 A The concept art or science: Cf. Polit. 258 B; Gorg. 462 B. This point
is often overlooked. Cf. Xen. Econ. I. 1.

Porphyry's logical tree: Cf. any compendium of logic, and my “Origin of
the Syllogism” (Class. Phil., XIX, 3).

218 D Trifling example: There is of course no contradiction with Rep.
368 D.

221 As an explanatory illustration: Cf. the specimen definitions given by
Socrates in Laches 192 AB; Theaet. 147 C, 208 D; Meno 75 B and 7 6 A; Rep.
353 A.

All the right hand: Cf. Phaedr. 2 66 A.

The humor: Cf., e.g., the reservation of “sophist” to the end of the sen¬
tence, 221 D, 223 B 7, 224 D 2, 225 E 5, 231 B 8, 268 C 4. Cf. Polit. 267 C 3.

That pervade all Plato's thought: Cf. Unity , p. 51, nn. 371, 372. Cf. on
Phileb. 16 D ff. and on Prot. 333. Cf. Theaet. 181 CD; G^. 454 E 3; /w/hz,
p. 599).

Ilalf-a-dozen definitions of the Sophist: Cf. Kurt Singer, Platon der Gruen-
der , p. 218.

Upon the “tact”: Cf. Unity (1904), p. 50; Taylor (1925), p. 377, “gump¬
tion.”

Discovery of all relevant distinctions: The imagery of the Sophist and Politi¬
cos implies this throughout. Cf. Soph. 235 C; Polit. 258 C, 260 E, 262 A, to
^rovpepop ep 8iT\aoLoioL ra pvp ep rots rjploeoip els Tore iroLTjoei fr/retcr^ai;
Soph. 229 D, el aropop fj8rj eari Tap, fj tipcl exov Sialpeviv atjlap eTWPvplas ;
Phaedr. 277 B, /car’ et 8rj pexpt rod clt/jitjtov reppeip ; Phileb. 13, 14 B, rrjp toIpvp
8ia.<t>opoTT)Ta , etc. Cf. also on Phileb. 16 D ff.; infra , p. 604.

Ilis discovery of the syllogism: Cf. my “Origin of the Syllogism,” 1 ff.

Earlier dialogues: Cf. my review of Friedlander, Class. Phil., XXVI (1931),
107.

But with social reform: Though it does occasionally use the terminology of
dichotomy. Cf. Laws 735 A 5, 751 A, 814 E, 815 C 1, 837 A, 861 BC, 908 E,
933 B 5> 935 D 944 B 6, 672 E 4, 895 E 1, 863 C 2.

231 D Huntsman of rich young men: Cf. Xen. Cyneget. XIII. 9. Cf. Laws
823 B 6 ff. on hunting of men. For the figure of hunting cf. on Rep. 432 B
(Loeb). Cf. Eurip. Hippol. 9 56. Cf. Symp. 203 D, where love is called a 0??-
pevTTjs Seipos. Cf. Lysis 206 A.

228 C Against its will: Cf. on Laws 730 C. Cf. Epict. I. 28. 4; II. 22. 76'
Marc. Aurel. VII. 63.

229 A Gymnastics: Cf. Gorg. 464 B ff. for a similar schematic distribu¬
tion.

230 A Admojiition: Cf. Democr., frag. 52; Isoc. to Nic. 49 a/iter(>); Xen.
Mem. I. 2. 21. Cf. Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism , pp. 40-41, “Mere com¬
manding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition in the de-

59 2

WHAT PLATO SAID

sires it tries to control . ” Cf. Kleist’s epigram, apud Pintner, Experi¬

mental Psychology and Pedagogy, p. 190, “When you admonish the children,
you think you are doing your duty as a teacher. Do you know what you are
teaching them? To admonish?”

Purged: Cf. Sen. Epist. 95. 38, “Nihil ergo proderit dare praecepta, nisi
prius amoveris obstatura praeceptis.”

230 C D Nourishment: Cf. Prot. 313 C 6 ff.; Soph. 223 E; Phaedr. 247 D

2, 248 B 5. ....

231 A Wolf resembles a dog: Cf. Cic. Lucullus 1 6, “Ut si lupi cambus simi¬
les eosdem dices ad extremum”; Epict., frag. 48 (Didot).

Resembla?ices: Cf. Hume’s “Resemblance is the most fertile source of er¬
ror”; Ar. Top. 164 a 25.

231 B Sophistry: The expression “noble - sophistry’Ts of course iron¬

ical. Cf. Rep. 544 C 6, where yevvcuos is used of tyranny; Hipp. Maj. 290 E
of p e a s ou p ; Hipp .Min. 370D \Rep. 454 A of eristic \Polit. 274 E7of a.ixa.pT7)ixcL\
Rep. 348 C 12. Some critics have taken it seriously.

232 B His habit of contentious contradiction: Infra, 268 B 4. Aristotle
makes this distinction a moral one. Cf. Top. 165 a 22.

233 C To know everything: Prot. 334 C, Euthyd. 294. Cf. Gomperz, Apol.
der Heilkunst , p. 33; Ar. Top. 170 a 27.

234 B Illusion or false opinion by words: Cf. Rep. 598 B, 601 A; Ar. Met.
1026 b 14, who quotes Plato.

Seems to us: E.g., to Jowett, Grote, Gomperz, op. cit ., pp. 23-24.

236 E 4 Avoiding self-contradiction: Cf. 238 D, 251 AB, 254 C; cf. Shorey,
Diss.y p. 17.

237 A ff. Main theme of the dialogue: Cf. P. Schmitfranz, Die Gestalt der
Platonischen Ideenlehre in den Dialogen ‘ Parmenides und Sophistes , p.141.

I have repeatedly maintained: Cf. my Diss., pp. 48-49 ff. Unity , pp. 53“55
and n. 391.

In the Parmenides: Cf. supra , pp. 290-91, and Unity, n. 41 1.

A real nuisance: Cf. on Rep. 436 B (Loeb) and 437 D; cf. Ar. De interp. 17
a 36-37, Met. 1005 b 22, Simplic. In Cat., p. 22, 9. Cf. Euthyd. 295 D, 277 E-
278 A.

A few muddled mystics: Cf. Arnold, loc. cit., “Erigena adds - Deus per

excellentiam non immerito nihilum vocatur. To such a degree do words make
man, who invents them, their sport”; Berkeley, Divine Visual Language,
19, “This method of growing in expression and dwindling in notion, etc.
Cf. Bett, Joh. Scotus Erigena, pp. 27, 97: “The terms ‘Deus’ and ‘nihil’ are
therefore logically equal.” Cf. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, III,
32; Arnold, God and the Bible, p. 73: “Reduce - their idea of God to noth¬
ing at all”; Wickham, The Unrealists, p. 34: “Maeterlinck - says of God

that he is ‘the Non-Being which is Being par excellence, the Absolute of the
Absolute.* ”

Sy?nbol of anything: Cf. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, I, 199-200.
Cf. Unity, nn. 261, 502, and 503.

In the psychogonia: Cf. Tim . 35 AB, 37 AB, 44 A; Class. Phil., XNIII
(1928), 352; AJP , IX, 297-98.

SOPHIST— NOTES

593

237 A Since error is: Cf. Tim. 38 B 3; Ar. Met. 1008 b 10.

237 B 8 Hold our tongues: Cf. my Diss., pp. 9, 47-49; Parmen. 161 A. Cf.
infra, 239 A; Theaet. 202 A; Parmen. 164 A. For ov8e \eyeiv, 237 E 5, cf. Cra-
tyl. 429 E 8 and 429 E 2, ov8e 0 aval.

238 D, 236 E Avoid self-contradiction: Cf. 241 E 5; the not-being catch
refutes itself, cf. Euthyd. 286 C 4, and infra 252 C.

239 B Too much for the Eleatic: Cf. 242 A; Cratyl. 429 D; Euthyd. 286 C;
Unity, p. 54.

Mouthpiece of Plato: Cf. on Parmen. 135 BC.

240 A From language and words only: This “late” idea is found already
in Rep. 601 A 7. The Sophist is the false counterpart of the dialectician who
proceeds through ideas only aiodTjTco .... ovbevl irpoaxpufievos (Rep. 51 1 C).
Cf. Parmen. 129 E. Cf. Phaedo 99 E 5, and cf. 240 A 4, to bib. ttclvtwv, with
Meno 74 A 9. The commonplace that Plato disregarded experience and the
senses is a misinterpretation. Cf., however, on Rep. 530 B 7-8 (Loeb.)

240 A 5 Eidolon: Cf. 241 E, 234 C; cf. 266 B with 267 C. Cf. Theaet .
150 C; Rep. 532 B with 517 D; my “Idea of Good,” p. 238.

242 C The pre-Socratics: Cf. Xen. Mein. I. 1 . 14; Isoc. Antid. 268-69; Hel¬
ena 2-3; Apelt, Aufsatze , p. 89; Grote, IV, 218.

242 C Mythical tales: Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , p. 10, “. . . .

The real advance made by the scientific men of Miletus was that they left off
telling tales . ” Similarly Bacon, Nov. Org ., I. 44.

243 A Over our heads: Cf. Parmen. 128 B; Theaet. 180 D; Arnold, God
and the Bible , p. 64, “For they were so far advanced in their speculations
about being, that they were altogether above entertaining such a tyro’s ques¬
tion as what being really was.” Similarly Emerson, “This band of grandees
.... sit on their clouds and from age to age prattle to each other and to no
contemporary.” Cf. 243 A 6 with Ar. Met. 1000 a 10.

242 C Others: It is idle to try to name precisely the “others.” Plato, as
usual, is generalizing. Cf. infra , 247 C, 252 A 7; Polit. 306 C 7; Phaedo
96 B ff.; Laws 889 ff. Cf. Campbell on Theaet. 152 D; Newman, p. 102. Cf.
Rep. 495 C; Friedlander, passim , e.g., II, 428, 434, 559, 585, 610, 613, 675;
Burckhardt, Die Grundtendenzen von Platons “ Philebos ” (Diss. Basel, 1913),

P- 7-

242 E Laxer: Cf. Meno 86 E. There is also a suggestion of the musical
modes.

244 A What they mean: Cf. Zeller, p. 648 ; Arnold, God and the Bible , chaps,
ii and iii; Shorey, Diss., p. 6, n. 1 : “Ipse autem Aristoteles ra d£id)/xara ex hac
sumptione eXeyKTiK&s demonstrat in met. T 4; cf. etiam met. T 8: aLrelodai
8ei ... . ovk elval tl 77 prj elv at aXXa aiyiaLveiv tl. Quare hanc sumptionem
jure dixeris ttjv apxyv kolt} e£oxr]v. Cf. Plat. Euthyd. 287 C: tl 001 a XXo voel
tovto to prjfia; Soph. 243 C et 244 A: TiiroTePovXeoOe ottotclv ov <f)9e yyecde”

245 C Detached from itself? Cf. Parmen. 13 1 B 2, 143 B, and Ar. Met.
1031 a 17. Cf. also Euthyd. 284 A; Unity , n. 439.

245 E 6 About being and not-being: Cf. supra , p. 588. Apelt ( Aufsatze ,
p. 92) compares Tim. 38 B.

594

WHAT PLATO SAID

248 A 4 Friends of ideas: The friends of ideas are plainly literal-minded
Platonists or embodiments of Plato’s conception of possible misunderstand¬
ings of his rhetoric about the absoluteness and the isolation of the ideas. Cf.
Rep. 597 A 9 and Matthew Arnold’s references to himself or his partisans
under the nickname of “friends of culture.” Cf. infra, 252 A 7. There is a
considerable literature of divergent opinions on this simple point. Cf. on Par-
men., supra, p. 588. Cf. Unity, n. 433; Gomperz, III, 172.

246 B 8 Bodiless: This was a sometimes mocking designation of the Pla¬
tonic ideas in later literature. Cf., e.g., Lucian Timon 9. Cf. Cic. Nat. deor.

I. 12, “Ut Graeci dicunt aaw/jiaTov ; id quale esse possit, intelligi non potest.”
Cf. also Class. Phil., XXIII (192#), 349.

246 D Reforming the materialists: The next page is in the tone of the edi¬
fying sermonettes of the Laws. Cf. Shorey, Laws, p. 366; also Theaet. 155
E ff. With 246 D 7 cf. Ep. II. 31 1 D 1.

247 AB That are alive: Cf. the later e/jLipvxonns.

247 C Squeeze with their hands: Cf. Theaet. 155 E 4-6; Epin. 983 C. The
quotation in Jowett’s letters, p. 190, of this passage with Theaet. 156 A 1-2
gave great offense to Herbert Spencer, Facts and Comments, p. 152. Olympi-
odorus (Hermann, VI, 196) calls the materialists bats who could not look at
the light of the sun.

247 E 3 Power or potentiality: Cf. Phaedr. 270 D. Aristotle {Top. 146 a
23 ff.) rejects this as he does most Platonic definitions to which he refers.
Cf. Shorey, Diss ., p. 42.

Provisional: Cf. Unity, p. 39. Similarly, with qualifications, Friedlander,

II, 528-29, who quotes Gomperz (Ger.), II, 457. Cf. to much the same effect
Rougier, pp. 314-15. Cf. Ar. Top. 146 a 23, 139 a 4-8. Cf. the Bud6 Sophist,
p. 286: “La definition de l’etre par la dvvafus n’a point dans le platonisme
[’importance d’une revolution doctrinale.” Cf. on the digression in the Phile-
bus 30, infra, p. 606.

248 B Either action or suffering: On the question whether cognition and
sensation involves “suffering,” cf. Ar. De an. 408 b 24, 29, 416 b 1-3, 416 b 32,
417 b 3. J4> 418 b 24, 419 a 17-18,429 a 13-15, 429 b 29, 431a 5. Cf. Shorey,
on Tim. 32 D, AfP, X, 50-51.

249 A 1-2 Abides unmoved mindless: Cf. Guastella apud Rignano, Psy¬
chology of Reasoning, p. 233: “We can imagine a changeless being, but it is
then impossible to imagine him as endowed with intelligence, reason and
will.”

249 A Soul or intelligence: Mind can exist only in soul. Cf. Tim. 30 B 3-5.

249 AB Motion: Cf. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, I, 321-22.

249 CD Does not move: The children’s game referred to can only be con¬
jectured. Perhaps the dichotomy resembles that of our children’s “Ready or
not, you shall be caught.”

250 B Distinct from either: It is uncritical to press this in support of the
inference that in the Sophist the Platonic ideas are only concepts. Cf. on Par-
men. 130 CD; Unity, p. 38.

250 C 6 Nor is at rest: Cf. Parmen. 139 B. Cf. More, Limitations of Sci¬
ence, p. 165, “The name, Principle of Relativity, is derived from Professor

SOPHIST— NOTES

595

Einstein’s first postulate, which is as follows: The idea of absolute rest or
absolute motion is an impossibility to the human mind.”

251 A The most suitable way: Cf. 254 C; my Diss ., pp. 8-9. Cf. Parmen .
135 B ff. Cf. Recent Platonism , pp. 280-81.

251 B Late learners: Otherwise expressed in 259 D 6. Cf. on Cratyl.
433 B 1. It is supposed to be a malicious allusion to Antisthenes. Cf. Camp¬
bell ad loc.

253 A Or all others: There are some uncertainties of text and interpreta¬
tion in these pages to be discussed elsewhere, but there is no doubt as to the
main argument.

253 D Dialectician: Cf. on Laws 9 66 C; Phileb. 58 D; Charm. 155 A.

255 A Five in all: The neo-Platonists regarded these five biggest ideas as
Plato’s categories, which they opposed to or compared with the" categories of
Aristotle. Cf. Zeller, III, 24, 573 f.

256 B Separates it from the same: Cf. Parmen.; supra , pp. 584-85. Note

that participation and communion are treated as synonyms. Cf. on Phaedo
100 D; Parmen. 129 B; and on Parmen. 131 A 5. Supra in 255 B, perexeu', is
opposed to elvai. Ar. Met. 991 a 21 with sneering reference to Parmen. 132 D
uses of the paradeigmatic theory of the ideas.

256 E Makes each to be: Cf. Santayana, The Realm of Essence, p. 57.

256 E Paradoxes: In spite of what was said in 252 D we need not even
scruple to speak of stable motion and a moving rest.

257 B Something other: Cf. Parmen. 160 C 5. On the difference between
“other” and “opposite” cf. 257 B C, 258 E; Parmen. 160 B C; Symp. 201 E-
202 A; Rep. 436 B; perhaps Phaedo 102 E; Phileb. 12 E; Ar. Met. 1004 a 21;
An. Prior. I. 40; Zeller, Aristotle (Eng.), I, 224; Shorey on Apelt, Class. Phil.,
VII (1912), 489-90; E. Hoffmann, “Der hist. LJrsprung des Satzes vom Wider-
spruch,” Sokrates , N.F., XI (1923), n. Plato’s alleged violations of the prin¬
ciple are mere colloquialisms, or do not affect the argument. Cf. Soph.
240 B 5, 240 D 6. Adam wrongly finds a case in Prot. 332 A.

257 E Denotes being: Ar. Met. 990 b 13 says Kara to ev tid tvoWwv there
will be ideas Kai t&v curocbcuTecov.

259 B 1 Not-being: For elvai fjtrj ov cf. on Parmen. 162 A.

259 D To isolate everythwg: Cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philoso-
phicus , p. 32, “So konnen wir uns keinen Gegenstand ausserhalb der Moglich-
keit seiner Verbindung mit anderen denken.”

259 E Communion of kinds: For <tvhtt\ok7) cf. Theaet. 202 B 5, ovonaruv
. . . . avnir\oKrjv, where the omission of p^/xara may or may not be significant.
Cf. Ar. De interp. I. 3; Rhet. 1405 b 26. Cf. Stout, Analytic Psychology , II,
197, “Language gives birth to conceptual thinking only when words are com¬
bined in the context.” For “destruction of all reasoning” cf. supra , p. 586,
and Parmen. 135 B.

260 C Phantasia: Phantasia is sometimes nearly equivalent to imagina¬
tion in the psychological sense, but it often takes its color from (fraiveTai and
<j>avTa£eTCu, which include all forms of opinion and illusion, and so it may be
merely a disparaging synonym of 8o£a. Cf. Theaet. 161 E; Ar. Soph. El.
168 b 19; Ar. De An. 428 a ff. (Hicks); Epict. I. 28. 12. But cf. also Theaet.

WHAT PLATO SAID

596

152 C and Soph. 26 4 A. As 5o£ at, ^avraanara may be true or false; as mere
images, if such a thing is possible, they may not. For the last view cf. Ar.
De an. 432 a 10; for the first, ibid. 428 a 12, where he is thinking of Phileb.
40 AB. Cf. Ross, Aristotle , p. 142; Apelt on Theaet ., IV, 159; Stenzel, Dialek-
tik , p. 91; Unity , p. 48.

Dialectical prolixity: Cf. on Po//7. 286 B.

262 of actions: Explicitly stated only here. Perhaps im¬

plied in Cratyl. 425 A. Cf. also 399 B 7, 431 B 6, 396 A 2. Cf. Ar. De inter.
1 6 b 19, aura plv ovv KaO 1 aura \eyopeva ra pi] par a ovopLara re eon Kal c^juaL
vei tl, which may or may not be intended as a correction of Plato. Cf. Unity,
pp. 56-57; Theaet. 206 D 2; Stenzel, p. 88. For actions as “things” cf. Theaet.
155 E 5; Cratyl. 386 E 7.

262 C First conjunction: On (jvp.tt\okt] cf. supra on 259 E.

263 B Is false: I cannot understand what critics mean who deny that
“quality” here anticipates the later technical use of the word in formal logic.
Cf. Ar. Top. 178 b 27.

266 D Eikastic and phantastic: cf. 236 C; and for the alleged contradiction
between 236 C and Laws 668 A ff. cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., XXVI (i93*)>
323-24.

267 D No name: In spite of the modern notion that they were the slaves
of one language, both Aristotle and Plato often notice the absence of a word
for an idea. Cf. Theaet. 156 B 6; Gorg. 464 B 4 — 5 5 PQPl* 260 E 7; Soph. 220 A
2, 257 D 9; Tim. 58 D 3, 67 A 1, 60 A 2-3; Theag. 123 C 6-7; Stewart on Ar.
Eth. 1125 b 28-29. Cf. also Rep. 544 C.

267 D Too lazy or stupid: We are far from “the blessed ancients.” Cf.
Phileb. 16 C 7; Cratyl. 425 A 6.

267 E Factual-mimetic: Lit., “historical.”

267 E A rift for dichotomy in that: This use of 8Lir\oriv was noted and used
by later Platonists. Cf. Class. Phil., X (1915), 452> an(1 Plot- V- 2- I-

268 B 3 Insincere: Lit., “ironic.” Cf. 268 C 8 and Laws 908 E 2.

268 B 4 To self-contradiction: Cf. Euthyd. 272 AB, 275 E 5-6, 305 D 6,

and passim.

Derivative appellation: Cf. Prot. 312 C 6. For tt apwvvpaov, cf. on Phaedo
78 E. Cf. Aesch. Eumen. 8.

The satisfaction: It is not so naive as the delight I felt the first time I
read the dialogue as an undergraduate, or as the complacency with which
modern interpreters one after the other repeat unnecessarily detailed analyses

of it.

A discovery of the concept: Cf. my review of Friedlfinder, Class. Phil.,
XXIII, 295. Cf. supra , p. 595, on 259 E, which should not be pressed to
mean that concepts cannot precede the conscious grammatical and logical
analysis of the sentence.

257 B, 258 B Not-Being is otherness: Cf. Parmen. 160 C 5; Zeller, Ar.
(Eng.), I, 225.

Unaccustomed to Greek idiom: Cf., however, Santayana, The Realm of Es¬
sence, p. 57. “Bread partakes of non-being by not being meat.” Cf. Alexan-

SOPHIST— NOTES

597

der, op. cit., 1, 199-200; supra , p. 585. Scores of modern philosophic and scien¬
tific writers think it worth while to repeat at greater length formulas of the
Sophist.

Of a specific negation: Cf. Grote, Aristotle , I, 195. Ross (p. 19 on 261 E)
says the analysis of judgment there resembles that in the De interpretatione
rather than that in the Anal, prior. But Sayce, Science of Language II. 239,
says that the negation is not included in the copula but belongs to the predi¬
cate.

262 B Modern grammar: But Sonnenschein, A New English Grammar
(Oxford, 1916), takes the whole first page to express what is said here in
three lines.

Sufficient for his purposes: Cf. the developments of Aristotle, Met. 1024 b
18, 1027 b 25.

POLITICUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

von Arnim, H., Ein altgriech. Konigsideal (Univ.-Rede). Frankfurt a. M.,
1916.

Campbell, L., “ Sophistes" and "Politicus" 0} Plato. Oxford, 1867.

Eberz, J., “Die Tendenzen der Platonischen Dialoge Theaitetos , Sophistes ,
Politikos," Archivf. Gesch. d. Philos. , XXII (1909), 252-63, 456-92.
Friedlander, II, 538-56.

Gomperz, pp. 167-85.

Grote, III, 185-284.

Natorp, pp. 349-55-

Nusser, J., “Ueber das Verhaltnis der Platonischen Politeia zum Politikos "
Philologus, LIII (1894), 12-37.

Raeder, pp. 337-52.

Ritter, Platon , II, 134-65, 185-258, 642-57.

- , Neue Unters. liber Platon , pp. 66-94.

- , Platons Dialoge , pp. 44-67.

Shorey, P., “A Lost Platonic Joke ( Politicus 2 66 D),” Class. Phil., XII
(1917), 308.

- , Unity , pp. 60 ff.

- , “Recent Platonism,” pp. 307-9.

Stephanides, B. C., Die Stellung von Platos “ Politikos " zu seiner “Pol teia”
und den Nomoi. Diss., Heidelberg, 1913.

Stewart, J. A., “The Politicus Myth,” The Myths of Plato , pp. 173-21 1.
Taylor, pp. 393-407.

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 572-85.

NOTES

A younger Socrates: Socrates the younger, a friend and contemporary of
the mathematician Theaetetus, is one of the interlocutors in the Politicus
and is also referred to in Soph. 218 B; Theaet. 147 D; and Ep. XI. 358 D. He
was the first Athenian teacher of Aristotle (Rose, Ar ., frag. 427, 16) by whom
he is criticized in Met. VI. 11. 1036 b 24-36 for his use of the irapaPoXi) rj eiri
to v in connection with the theory of ideas (cf. Alexander, Comm, in

Arist. gr ., I, 514, 3 ff., and Asclepius, ibid., VI, 2, p. 420, 20, who identify
Socrates the younger with the Socrates of the Platonic passages just men¬
tioned). Cf. Kapp in Pauly-Wiss., Ill, A, 890-91; Apelt on Soph. 218 B.

257 AB Introductory banter and exchange of compliments: Note the pon¬
derous mathematical jest, 257 AB. Cf. Rep. 587 DE. For the idea that we
know men through their speech (258 A) cf. Isoc. Panegyr. 49; Ruskin, Kings'
Treasuries: “He has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known
for an illiterate person, etc.”

258 B Representative of some science or art: Cf. on Soph. 219 A; Cratyl.

598

POLITICUS— NOTES

599

428 E; Gorg. 462 B. Plato can distinguish the terms “science” and “art” when
the distinction is needed.

Monosyllabic respondent: At 271 A-C 3 he enters into the game in Aristo-
phanic fashion. Cf. on Hipp. Maj. 294 E. At 277 A he is rebuked for an over-
hasty assumption that the definition is completed. At 292 E 6 he makes a
good point which shows that he is following the argument. At 293 E he ob¬
jects, like Cleinias in the Laws (71 1 A), even to the hypothesis of a ruler above
the laws.

Method of dichotomy: Cf. 260 B, 262 CD, 262 E, 266 CD; Phaedr ., 253 C,
270 B, 271 D; and on Soph ., supra , p. 591. Cf. my review of Gomperz in
Class . Phil., I (1906), 298; Unity , pp. 50-51. Cf. Friedlander, II, 509.

Separating: 279 A 3, 287 D 6. This idea generates a succession of images:
279 B ff., weaving and its subsidiary processes, terminating 283 AB in a defi¬
nition; 303 E ff., the extraction of pure gold from the earths and ores that
inclose it. These passages might be used to illustrate Plato’s knowledge of
the technical vocabulary and processes of the arts, his growing interest in
scientific classification, and other points of his logical method and his style.

277 D Patterns: 277 B, 277 D ff., 278 E, 278 C 4, 285 E f. Cf. Soph .
226 C; Parmen. 132 D; and on Euthyph. 6 E.

For the relation of this to the doctrine of ideas cf. on Rep. 369 A, 402 C
(Loeb); Polit. 269 D, 285 E.

285 E The charge of undue prolixity: Cf. 263 A 6, 287 A, 283 B; Laws
887 B, 890 E-891 A; 638 E, 642 A, Phileb. 36 D 9, 65 B 3; and by implication
Gorg. 454 C: Phileb. 28 D. Cf. Isoc. Panath. 135-36; also Emil Faguet, Pour-
qu'on lise Platon , chap, i, and Chapman: “The monotonous prolixity of Pla¬
to.” Emerson has answered them all: “The criticism is like our impatience
of miles when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have
seventeen hundred and sixty yards.” Cf. Grote, II, 27 on Ale. I; Friedlander,
II, 543, n. 2.

284 En That all things are subject to number and measure: Cf. on
Euthyph. 7 C. Cf. my “Platonism and the History of Science,” p. 176.

Purely relative mathematical measurement: Cf. Rep. 524-26; with C2i A 2*
The at. 186 A 10.

284 D Cut short discussion in the “ Phaedo ” and “ Timaeus ”: Cf. Phaedo
7 6 E and 77 A; Tim. 51 D; Phaedo 92 D; Parmen. 149 A 2; Ar. on coming to
be, 314 b 37, De an. 404 a 9; cf. Cic. Div. 1. 6. 10, “Si quidem ista sic recipro-
cantur, ut et si divinatio sit di sint et si di sint sit divinatio.” Cf. Friedlander,

II, 326 on Phaedo. Cf. on Rep. 437 A (Loeb).

Plato's polemic against mere relativity: Theaet. 157 A, 160 B, 167 C, etc.;
Cratyl. 385 A, D, 386 387, 439-40. Cf. also on Prot. 334 A.

258 D f. Generalized to include that of the king: Plato’s conscious generali¬
zation anticipates favorite ideas of the Stoics and of Ruskin. Cf. Xen. Mem .

III. 4. 12. Aristotle from another point of view chooses to combat it (Pol.
1252 a 7 f.).

Competent adviser of a king: It has been surmised that Plato is thinking of
himself, and his Sicilian experiences. Cf. Laws 710 C. Again the idea of the
Stoics and Ruskin that he who knows how to rule is king. Cf. Xen. Mem.
III. 9. 10, and infra on 292 E.

6oo WHAT PLATO SAID

Rather a theoretic than a merely practical art: This anticipates Aristotle
Eth. Nic. 1139 a 28.

261 DE Sound methods bids us continue: Cf. supra 285 D.

263 A 6 The charge of prolixity: Cf. supra on 285 E.

263 B Mark ideas: For the theory of ideas any and every subordinate
group apprehended as a conceptual unit by the mind is an idea. For sound
logical and scientific classification only true genera and species are ideas — not
necessarily ‘'true species” in the sense of the modern naturalist, but in the
sense of the Platonic logic; that is, classes and groups based on significant and
relevant distinctions. From the one point of view we expect every part to be
an idea; from the other, Plato explicitly warns us against mistaking for true
ideas what are mere fragments or parts ( Polit . 287 C, implied “already” in
Phaedr. 265 E; cf. Polit. 262 B, aXXa to juepos a jua eldos ex*™). Cf. on Euthyph.

1 2 D. Plato’s embarrassment shows that he felt the difficulty. Sound method
required him to emphasize the distinction. But he was quite unable to define
its nature. {Polit. 263 AB, to distinguish genus [or species] and part would
require a long discussion.) He can only say that, while every species is a part,
every part is not a species (ei5os). Cf. Cic. De Inventione I. 22. 32: Si genera
ipsa rerum ponuntur, nequi permixti cum partibus implicantur.

262 D Greeks and barbarians: Cf. Shorey in Class. Phil ., IX (1914), 35°:
“The rejection in Politicus 262 D of the antithesis Greek-Barbarian is some¬
times taken as a contradiction of the distinction in Republic 469-7 1. ....
But it is no more a recantation of this normal Greek feeling than 263 D is an
abandonment of the distinction between men and cranes. The significance
of both passages in the Politicus is logical, with a touch of transcendental
irony toward all human pretensions.”

Cf. Menex. 245 D; Laws 693 A. This is not incompatible with the attribu¬
tion of special knowledge to the barbarians. Cf. Symp. 209 E; Phaedo 78 A
with Burnet’s misleading note; Epin. 986 E ff., 987 DE; Shorey in Class. Phil.,
XXIV (1929), 214, and on Rep. 469-70; Taylor, p. 44; Ritter, Philologus ,
LXVIII, 249-50, who like Taylor and Burnet thinks Plato was free from
“der gewohnliche Hellenenstolz”; Ackermann, Das Christliche in Platon , pp.
326-27, who speaks of his Griechenstolz; and on the general question F.
Weber, “Platons Stellung zu den Barbaren,” Progr . (1924); Muhl, Die antike
Menschheitsidee; E. R. Bevan, Class. Rev., XXIV (1910), 109-n; W. H. S.
Jones, ibid., pp. 208-9; J* A. K. Thomson, Greeks and Barbarians (1921);
Jiithner, “Isokrates und die Menschheitsidee,” Wien. Stud., XLVII, 26-31;
also his book, Hellenen und Barbaren. For ordinary Greek feeling cf. Shorey
on Herod. I. 60, Class. Phil., XV (1920), 88; Isoc. Panegyr. 157-58, 184;
Antid. 77; Panath . 42-44, 102, 163. Eurip. Androm. 173; Hec. 328, frag. 717.

In post-classical literature mystics, Orientals and Christians often affirmed
the superiority of the barbarians. Cf. Diog. L. Proemium; Tatian, Adversus
Graecos; Migne, VI, 803 ff., who leaves only rhetoric and poetry to the Greeks.

266 C Least fastidious: Cf. Shorey in Class. Phil., XII (1917), 308-10.

267 C Hornless biped herd of men: Cf. the famous definition of man at¬
tributed to Plato (Diog. L. VI. 40). Cf. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. II. 28; Plat.
Def. 415 A.

POLITICUS— NOTES

601

268 D 5 Make a fresh start: on Charm. 165 AB.

268 D 8 Intermingle jest with our earnest: Cf. on Phaedr. 251. Cf. Phaedr.
276 B 5, 276 D 2, 277 E 6; Laws 713 A 6. Wilamowitz (I, 568) mistakenly
says the myth is a joke. So Apelt, Aufsdtze , p. 85; W. A. Harris, Plato as a
Narrator (Johns Hopkins dissertation, 1892), pp. 25-26; Ritter, Neue Un-
tersuchungen iiber Platon , pp. 77-78; J. Adam, “The Myth in Plato’s Politic
cus ,” Class. Rev.y V (1891), 445-46, with Shorey AJP , X, 55.

268 E In many ancient fables: Cf. Laws 677 A, 816 B; Ti?n. 22 C; Crit .
1 10 A; and perhaps on Laws 957 AB.

269 A Reversed the course of the sun and stars: Cf. Eurip. Electra 727 ff.;
Wil., I, 574.

269 D Great architect: Lit., him who compacted it.

269 D 5 Abide ever unchanged: The phrasing recalls the theory of ideas.
Cf. Kara tclvtcl Kai ajaavrus exet, Phaedo 78 CD. Cf. Rep. 484 B ; Phaedo 79 D ;
Soph. 248 A; Tim. 41 D, 82 B; Epin. 982 B and E. Cf. Rep. 500 C. Cf. Phi -
leb. 59C 4; Symp. 21 1 AB.

269 D 9 It must be admitted: For the reluctant ovv cf. Tim. 48 E-49 A.

269 E 6 Only the leader of all movements: An anticipation of Aristotle’s
prime mover, though that does not itself move.

269 E Always turn itself the same way: Cf. Tim. 77 BC and note on this
in AJPy X (1889), 74.

270 A 2 There remains only: For this exhaustive method cf. on Theaet.
193 B.

270 A Revolves of its own motion: Cf. Urwick, The Message of Plato , p. 1 51.

270 D ff. Vanished away: For the reversed evolution cf. Pearson, The
Grammar of Science , p. 540, “Now suppose him to travel away from our earth
with a velocity greater than that of light. Clearly all natural processes and all
history for him would be reversed, etc.”

271 A From the earth: Arnobius (Adv. gentes) quotes this for the resurrec¬
tion of the body, the Theaetetus for meditation on God, and the Phaedo for
the fires of hell.

272 BC Gift of conversing: There is a strange misinterpretation of this
passage in Andrew D. White’s Warfare of Science with Theology , II, 173.
For the simple life cf. Rep. 372; Laws 678-79. For the golden age cf. Nestle,
Herodots Verhliltnis zur Philos, u. Sophistiky p. 18, “Eine ganze Sammlung
hierher gehoriger Komodienbruchstiicke bei Ath. VI. 267 D ff., wozu Graf,
Ad aureae aetatis fabulae symbola (Leipziger Stud, zur Klass. Philol., VIII,
1885), p. 59 ss., und Pohlmann in den Neuen Jahrb. f. d. Kl. Alt ., I (1898),
S. 29.”

272 BC The distinctive differences of each: Cf. 285 B; Ar. Met. 980 a 27;
Theaet. 208 D, Phileb. 38 B 2; Tim. 23 A. For tt apa Traa^s (frvaeoosiC 3) cf.
Theaet. 174 A 1.

272 D 3 Some trustworthy revelation: For Plato’s irony toward dogmatism
about the prehistoric cf. Phaedr. 229 D; Rep. 382 D (Loeb); Laws 682 E 5.

272 E 5 His post of observation: Tvepionri] was a Homeric word taken over
into neo-PIatonism from this passage. Cf. II. XIV. 8; XXIII. 451; Od. X.
146.

602

WHAT PLATO SAID

273 C The source of all evil: This and some passages in the Timaeus are
the source of the neo-Platonic interpretation that matter is the principle of
evil. Cf. on Theaet. 17 6 A.

273 D 4 Finally: The Homeric phrase rore 8rj or its equivalent t6t 1 ti8tj
usually marks a crisis or a turning-point. Cf. supra , 272 E 2, rore 617. Cf.
/?*>/>. 550 A, 551 A, 565 C, 573 A, 591 A, and Plato passim.

274 B 1 Its application to our theory of politics: Plato always explains his
point. Cf. Phaedr. 249 D 4; Tim. 27 B.

274 C 4 The first painful steps in civilization by themselves: Necessity or
need became the mother of their invention. Cf. Rep . 369 C; cf. on Prot. 322.

275 B Culture and breeding: Cf. 292 D; Rep. 426 D (Loeb), 558 B 5-8;
Gorg. 513 B, 517; Ar. Knights 46-63; Apelt, Aufsatze , p. 175. Cf. Shorey,
Laws , p. 362, n. 2.

His specific task of government: Plato returns to the method of definition
by dichotomy for a few pages (275 D-277 A).

275 A Shepherd of his people: Cf. 268 A; Rep. 343 B and 345 C; Xen.
Mem. III. 2. 1 ; and for the history of the expression M. Runes, Philol. IVoch .,
L (1930), 1446-54*

Government of an ideal tyrant is impracticable: Cf. Shorey, Laws , pp. 356-57.
Cf. Shorey on Barker, Nation , LXXXIV (1907), 291.

Regard his “ Republic ” as realizable: Cf. Loeb, Rep.y I, In trod., xxxi, on
Rep. 472 B-E and on Cratyl. 432 CD.

292 E 9 Knows how to rule: For this anticipation of the Stoics and Ruskin
cf. supra , p. 599, and Xen. Mem. III. i. 4.

Could ever acquire this art: Cf. 297 B 7, 300 E 5; Rep. 494 A, 503 BC.

300 C 2 The second best: Cf. Laws 739, 807 B. For devrepos tt\ovs cf. on
Phaedo 99 C.

303 B As in the “ Euthydemus ” and “Gorgias”: Euthyd. 290 B ff.; Gorg.
503-5 and passim, 515 ff., 521; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1094 a 27.

303 E, 304 E Subordinate ministers: Cf. Minos 320 C, ovx o\rjv ttjv fiaau-
\iKrjv rexvyv, aXX* VTnjpeaiav rfj PacriXiKy. Cf. on Euthyd. 290 CD.

310 C ff. His special task is defined: The royal art. Cf. on Euthyd. 291 B
(. supra 276). Wilamowitz (I, 567) says no definition of the statesman is
reached. Plato says it is.

309 C He is to teach virtue and inculcate right opinion: Rep. 430 B; Meno
98 A; Euthyd. 292 BC ff. With pera pePaiwaews (309 C 6) cf. Laws 653 A 8.

Or aristocracy: 445 D. It cannot be a democracy, because both the Re¬
public (494 A) and the Politicus (292 E 1-2) pronounce it impossible that the
multitude should possess the requisite knowledge.

The ideal kingdom: The Politicus does not describe the development of
one form from the other but merely states the order of preference among the
lawful and lawless forms of the three types. Campbell (Introd., p. xliv) over¬
looks all this when he treats as proofs of lateness the addition of /SacriXeia as
one of the lower forms, and the depression of 6\iyapxLcL below SrjpoKparLa.

And oligarchy last: Laws 710 E. The paradox, Tvpavvovpevrjv pot 8ore ttjv
7 toXlv, 709 E, is literally incompatible with the associations of rvpavvos in the
Republic , but the notion of a revolution accomplished by arbitrary power is
found in 501 A, 540 E.

PHILEBUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O., Platonische Aufsdtze , pp. 121-46.

Badham, Ch., The “ Philebus ” of Plato. London, 1878.

Bury, R. G., The “Philebus” of Plato. Cambridge, 1897.

Ferber, J., “Pl.s Polemik gegen die Lustlehre,” Zeits.f. Philos, u. phil.

Kritik , CXLVIII (1912), 129-81.

Friedlander, II, 557-98.

Gomperz, III, 186-99.

Grote, III, 334-400.

Horn, F., “Zur Philebosfrage,” Arch.f. G. d. Philos ., IX (1896), 271-97.
Lukas, F., Die Methode der Einteilung bei Platon , pp. 262-85. Halle, 1888.
Maguire, Th., “The Philebus of Plato and Recent English Critics,” Herma-
thena , I (1874), 441-67.

Natorp, pp. 312-49.

Philippson, R., ‘Akademische Verhandlungen iiber die Lustlehre,” Hermes ,
LX (1925), 444-81.

Raeder, pp. 354-74-

Ritter, Platon , II, 165-258, 497-554.

- , Pl.s Dialoge , pp. 68-97.

- , Neue Unters., pp. 95-173.

Rougier, L., “La correspondance des genres du Soph, du Philebe et du
Timee” Arch.f. G. d. Philos ., XXVII (1914), 305-34*

Shorey, P., “Note on Plato Philebus 11 B, C,” Class. Phil ., Ill (1908),
343-45-

- , “Note on Plato Philebus 64 A, ibid., XX (1925), 347.

- , Unity, pp. 63 ff.

- , “Recent Platonism,” AJP, IX, 279-85.

- , Diss., p. 8, nn. 1 and 2; p. 12, n. 3.

Taylor, pp. 408-35.

Wilamowitz, I, 628-42; II, 266-77.

NOTES

By Dionysius of Halicarnassus: “De admir. vi dicendi in Demosth.,” p.
1025 (Reiske).

Of Plato s later manner: Mill pronounced the Philebus late long before the
style statisticians “proved it” (Diss. and Discuss ., IV, 243).

Of the jests: Cf. 14 A 4, 15 C 9, 23 B, 29 A-B 10, 16 B 4 (where Zeller 624
and 680 misses the point. Cf. 53 D ff., 61 fF., 64-65); 17 E 3 (cf. Tim. ^55 C),
34 D 5-8, 43 A 6 (but cf. Laches 183 D, Laws 629 B). Jowett’s citations of
28 C, 30 E, 36 B, 46 A and 62 B are irrelevant or misapprehensions. More

603

WHAT PLATO SAID

604

important for interpretation is the warning not to press jests or take them
too seriously. Cf. on 22 C, 30 E, 43 B 8.

Of the one: 15 B, Do such “monads” exist? Cf. Leibnitz* and Giordano
Bruno’s use of the word. Cf. Tim . 51 C, Are there ideas? and with xwp'is,
15 B 7, cf. Parmen. 131 B 2, 5 and Unity , n. 439. There is even some repeti¬
tion of the logical lessons and terminology of the Meno and Protagoras in
12-13. Cf. Meno 72 D 8 ff.; Prot. 331 D.

Advanced in the “ Parmenides ”: 131 ff. The parallel seems to me very close
and I find no difficulties. Those raised by Friedlander (II, 567), Wilamowitz,
Levi, Ritter, Taylor, and others may be discussed elsewhere.

Of human reason : Cf. Edmond Scherer, VIII, ix, “Une de ces abstractions
qui defraient nos incurables besoins mystiques.” Cf. Lange, Hist, of Material¬
ism , III. 37.

16 D Assuming ideas: Cf. Symp. 187 E 8; Tim. 39 E, with Class. Phil.,
XXIII (1928), 354; 344, n. 2. Cf. 62 A; Unity , p. 51.

Set forth in the “ Phaedrus Cf. Unity , n. 377, pp. 51 -52. The subject of
the Phaedrus being the necessity of basing rhetoric upon definitions and dia¬
lectic, that point is naturally emphasized there (265 D). Rhetoric is a special
psychological application of this general scientific method. Cf. Cic. De or.
I. 42 and II. 34. But all theories of a sharp distinction between the method of
the Phaedrus and that of the “later” dialogues will only injure the scholarship
of their propounders. It is one method which is described in Phaedr. 265, 266,
270 D; Phileb. 16-18; Cratyl. 424 C; Soph. 226 C, 235 C, 253, etc.; Polit.
285 A, etc.; Laws , 894 A, 963 D, 965 C. Each dialogue brings out some aspect
of it less emphasized in the others. We cannot expect Plato to repeat himself
verbatim. But these variations have little or no significance for the evolution
of his thought. Cf. 23 E 5, 25 A, 57 B 10. With epacxTT]s, 16 B, cf. Phaedr.
266 B. The method is illustrated by the classification of the sounds of the
alphabet. Cf. 17 B ff. Cf. Theaet. 203 B; Cratyl . 424 ff., 425 D. And through¬
out the necessity of distinguishing and dividing and reducing the pluralities
and infinities of perception to the unity of the concept or idea is emphasized.
Cf. 18 AB, 18 C 8, 25 A, 57 B 10. Cf. on Theaet. 147 D.

For Theuth (18 B) cf. Phaedr. 274 C, 275 C; Cic. De nat. deor. III. 22.

16 C Nearer to the gods: Cf. Rep. 388 B 4, 391 E; Crit. 121 A; Tim. 40 D;
Cic. Tusc. I. 12. 26; Cic. Legg. II. n. 27.

Gravely misinterpreted passages: Cf. e.g., Taylor, Tim., pp. 445-46; Bur¬
net2, p. 323; Wil., I, 639; Stenzel, Plat. Dialektik, p. 104. Campbell's (Introd.
to Soph, and Pol., p. xvi) “the smallest number possible” is a misapprehen¬
sion. He says that the method is not that of the Phaedrus. For similar mis¬
apprehensions cf. Campbell, Soph., lxix.

That the ideas are numbers: Cf. “Recent Interpretations of the Timaeus ,”
Class. Phil., XXIII (1928), 347. Cf. “Ideas and Numbers Again,” ibid., XXII
(1927), 213-18. Taylor on Tim. 47 B says the reference there is more par¬
ticularly to clplQ/jltjtikt) , the science of number. The apiO/ios of 16 D 4 and 8,
18 A 9, B 2, 19 A 1; Laws 894 B 1 is plainly the number of subdivisions be¬
tween the universal and the infinity of particulars. Cf. Cic. De or. 1. 42: “No-

PHILEBUS— NOTES

605

tanda genera et ad certum numerum paucitatemque revocanda,” ibid. II. 34.
Cf. the axiomata media of Bacon. Cf. Ar. An. post. 82 a 20, ra juera£i> ovk hdex-
6tcll ct7 retpa elvai. Mackintosh, Diss., “The inconvenience of leaping at once
from the most general laws to a multiplicity of minute appearances.”

Confusing our inquiry: Cf. on this point my criticism of Jackson, AJP ,
IX, 279-80.

That it exists: Cf. Unity , p. 6; Emerson, “Plato,” Representative Men , “No
power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence.
The perfect enigma remains. But there is an injustice in assuming this ambi¬
tion for Plato.”

It is uncritical to press the different meanings of ov in Plato into the service
of any theory of change or development in his opinions. The word may at
any time be used in any one of at least three meanings, as context and purpose
require: (1) definition or outria ( Phaedr . 238 D 8, 237 C 2, D 1); (2) absolute
or metaphysical being, especially in protest against the unavoidable use of
etvcu., “to be,” for relative and in a sense unreal being; cf. Phaedr. 247 E 1,
249 C 2; Tim. 37 E with Lucret. I. 415; Tim. 52 B 7, C5 with Parmen.
151 A, 138 A, 149 A (?); Phaedo 83 B (?); Symp. 21 1 A 8; cf. supra , pp. 291,
299 ff., 588; cf. on Rep. 477 A 2, iravrekus ov> with Soph. 248 E 7, where it is
more vaguely neither quite absolute being nor la somme de Vetre; (3) the rela¬
tive changeable being of ordinary language and common sense.

Good in the universe: Grote, III, 367 on 64 A cites with approval Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1096-97, 1155 b 10 against attempts to discuss ontology and ethics at
once. Aristotle, however, is thinking of Lysis 214 B, 215 D ff., where Plato is
satirizing the pre-Socratics. But when Plato pleases, he speaks with Aristoteli¬
an precision of e%iv ypvxw Kai SiaOea iv. Cf. 1 1 D 4; cf. 19 C 6, 64 C 7.

Aiialogies with the “Timaeus” : Cf., e.g., infra on 29A-31 A.

The ethical problem required: Cf. infra , 19 B, 20 A 6, 32 B. 20 C 4 is not
really an abandonment of this. Cf. 55 A, 64 A.

Transfer of the thesis: Cf. on Hipp. Min. 365 D. For the harmless omission
of the article in n B 4 cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., Ill (1908), 343; Friedlander,
II, 563; Mauersberger, Hermes , LXI (1926), 223.

Contest between pleasure and intelligence: n E, 12 A, 20 C, 22 C, 22 E,
23 AB, 59 D, 60 AB, 66 AB, 67 AB.

Pleasure (in all senses of the word)\ Cf. 12 CDE with Prot. 331 D; Leslie
Stephen, Science of Ethics , p. 44: “The love of happiness must express the
sole possible motive of Judas Iscariot and his Master, etc.”

Sustained or repeated image: Cf. 22 C, 23 A and B, 33 C, 27 C, 61 A, and
on Ion 535-36.

Frequent resumes: Cf. 19 C, 22 CD, 59 E ff., 26 B, 27 B, 31 A, 41 B, 50 BC.
Cf. Tim. 17 C-19 B, Phaedr. 267 D 5.

Transitions: Cf. Grace Hadley Billings’ Chicago diss., The Art of Transi¬
tion in Plato , p. 26.

20 D All creatures desire: Cf. Rep. 505 A ff., E; Euthyd. 278 E; Gorg. 468
AB; Symp. 206 A; Dante, Purg., XVII, 127-29; Boethius III. 10; Ar. Eth.

117334.

6o6

WHAT PLATO SAID

20 E ff. Even of the pleasure: C f. Ribot, La logique des sentiments , p. 3;
Moore, Principia ethica , p. 91. With 21 C 7-8 cf. Gorg . 494 AB. For ttpovtit-
Tovarjs , 21 C 3, cf. Tim . 33 A 5.

22 C Philebus ’ divinity: We cannot press the looser Greek use of Geos.
Cf. 26 B 8 where 17 6p07) kolvuvicl (25 E 7) is a goddess, or perhaps curia. Cf.
Friedlander, II, 574. Cf. 28 B 1. Cf. alsoEurip. Orest. 398-99, Xvirry, 213-14,
X17077; Phoen. 506, Tvpavvis ; 532, $iX<m/ua; 782, eoXa/3eia; 798, epis; Aesch.
Choeph. 59, to 5’ evrvxew; Hesiod /^. D. 764, $17 pr?; Semon. 102, Hunger;
Eurip. //<?/. 560, to yiyvoxyKeiv </>tXous; Swinburne, “But this thing is God, to be
man with thy might, etc.”; Pliny Nat. hist. II. 18, “Deus est mortali iuvare
mortalem.”

True divine mind: This byplay has been taken as a distinct theological
affirmation of the identity of God with the Idea of Good. Cf. Zeller, p. 694;
p. 718, n. i; J. Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece (Edinburgh, 1908),
pp. 442 ff.; Apelt, Beitrdge zur Gesch. d. Gr. Philos. , p. vi; R. C. Lodge, Philos.
Rev.y XXXI (1922), 252, n. 1; E. W. Simson, Der Begriff der Seele bei Platon ,
p. 87; Adela M. Adam, Plato , Moral and Political I deals , p. 103; ibid.y pp.
104, 1 16; Gomperz, III, 85; H. Tietzel, “Die Idee des Guten in Platos Staat
und der Gottesbegriff,” Progr. Wetzlar (1894), p. 15; L. R. Packard, Studies
in Greek Thought , p. 70; and many others.

22 A Classification of all things: ovra is not to be pressed as in Taylor’s
“everything which is actual” (p. 414) and in Stewart’s “these 6vra or prin¬
ciples of being” ( Platonic Doct. of Ideas , p. 94). Cf. my Diss., p. 2, n. 5: “Ob-
servandum est tol ovtcl et apud Platonem et apud Aristotelem primarie, ut cum
barbaris loquar, nihil signifkare nisi omnia linguae Graecae vocabula” (1884).
Cf. Unity, n. 392. Cf. Phaedo 79 A 6; Class. Phil., V (1910), 515; Phaedr.
263 DE; Xen. Mem. IV. 6. 1

23 D 7 The cause of mixture: Cf. 22 D, 27 B 1, 27 B 9, 28 A, 28 C 7, 30
E 1, 64 C 6.

30 D Other expressions of that conception: As vovs , mind, God, the Demi-
ourgos, and the idea of good. Brochard ( Etudes de philo sophie, p. 165) says
the “Demiourgos” is the “cause” of the Philebus. So Rougier also, p. 309,
“L’atTta n’est plus un genre, comme les trois denominations precedentes.
C’est un individu, une personnalite concrete: le demiurge.” Cf. infra on 30
D ff.

Indeterminate matter or space: Cf. Tim. 49 ff., 50-51. Theaet. 147 D, eireibi)
caveipoi to 7rX^os .... £uXXa/3eti' els ev, implies the method of Phileb. 15, 16.
Cf. Rep. 525 A; Polit. 262 D; Soph. 256 E; Parmen. 158 C. Schneider (p. 4,
n. 1) notes this meaning, but still insists that the aTreipov of the Philebus
primarily means indeterminate matter, which he rightly shows is not = prj ov ,
p. 5 (cf. Unity, n. 261), but wrongly denies to be virtually identical with space.
Cf. Siebeck, p. 84. The Timaeus does not explicitly identify “matter” and
“space” merely because it does not distinctly separate the two ideas. Cf.
AfP, IX, 416. But whether we call it matter or space, the x&Pa) the 7ra^5ex«,
the mother of generation is one. Cf. further Unity, p. 64, n. 503, and on Tim.
49A-51 A, 52 B.

PHILEBUS— NOTES

607

Equate: Cf. Shorey, Diss ., p. 12; “Recent Platonism,” pp. 282 ff. Cf. An¬
gela Warmuth, Das Problem des Agathon in Platon s “Philebus” (Nestle, Phil.
fVoch ., February 23, 1929).

Riddling fashion: The exact and obvious analogies pointed out in the notes
on 29 E-31 A are another matter.

A secret doctrine: The notion that Plato himself had a secret doctrine has
been fostered by the many passages in which he ironically or playfully attrib¬
utes mystery, secrecy and an inner doctrine to others. Cf. on Phaedo 61 D;
Parmen . 128 D 8, 136 DE; Theaet. 152 C 10, 155 D 10, 180 D i; Cratyl. 413
A 3, 395 B 6; Charm. 162 AB; Tim. 48 C, 53 D; Euthyd. 304. Novotny
{Plato's Epistles , p. 87) actually finds it in Rep. 494 A. Cf. supra , pp. 46, 588.

24 E 6-7 Admits of more or less: Cf. 26 D, 24 A 9. Cf. on Phaedo 93 B
and Ar. Cat. 6 a 19:

Opposing principles: Cf. 25 E 7 with Symp. 186-87, where kolvcovLcl (cf.
Gorg. 508 A 1) shows that the speaker is Plato's mouthpiece, as in Symp.
179 D and Parmen. 135 BC, which see.

29 E Teleology of the “ Phaedo ” and the “Timaeus” : Cf. Phaedo 97-99;
Soph. 265 E; Tim. 48 E, 53 B, and passim. Philological conjecture associates
the whole passage with Xenophon and with Xenophon’s supposed sources in
the Sophists and pre-Socratics. Cf. Xen. Mem. I. 4. 8; I. 4. 17-18; Sext. Em-
pir. Adv. dogm. III. 92 ff. Cf. Willi Theiler, Zur Gesch. d. teleol. Naturb., pp.
16-17, and his criticisms of Wilamowitz, I, 640; Eva Sachs, “Die funf Pla-
tonischen Korper,” Philol . Unters ., Heft 24 (1917); and Dickerman, De ar-
gumentis quibusdam apud Xenophonte?n , P l atone m, Aristotelem obviis e struc-
tura hominis et animalium petitis (Halle, 1909).

29 E, 30 E Rigor of pure dialectics: Cf. Phaedr. 265 E ff. with 276 D, 277 E
with 276 A and 276 E; Tim. 59 CD.

29 A Smart fellows: Cf. on Phaedr. 245 C; Laws 907 C, 887 E. It is pos¬
sible but not necessary to think of Democritus.

28 A Come from the universe: E.g., there is fire in our world and more and
purer fire in the universe, which is not of course identical with the idea of fire
in Tim. 51 B. For the soul cf. ibid. 42 E 8-9; Xen. Mem. I. 4. 8, 17-18; Cic.
Nat. dcor. III. 1 1, IT. 6, “Unde enim hanc homo arripuit ut ait apud Xeno-
phontem Socrates.”

The macrocosm: Plato does not use the words, but the antithesis of micro¬
cosm and macrocosm derives from this passage. Cf. Bett, Joh. Scotus Eri-
gcna , p. 55; Baumgartner, Philos . des Alanus de insulis , p. 88; Maurice Sceve,
Microcosme (1562); K. Ziegler, Neue Jahrb. (1913), pp. 52 9-74; Willi Theiler,
op. cit.y p. 21; Mayor, De nat. deor.y II, 101.

30 B Regeneration: Plato does not use the word, but I think intends
the idea. So Sturt, Principles of Understandings says “Regeneration, that
strange power by which the lower forms of life are enabled to replace lost
members.” Cf. MacDougall, Mind and Body , p. 240; Hobhouse, Mind in
Evolutions p. 26, a machine cannot repair itself. For the thought of the pas¬
sage as a whole cf. Robinson, Readings in General Psychology ,p. 102, “Organ-

6o8

WHAT PLATO SAID

isms do those things that advance their welfare”; Whitehead, Concept of
Nature , p. 9.

30 D Category of cause : Jowett (IV, 524) confuses this and 60 D. The
philology of this page will be considered elsewhere. There is no real doubt
about the meaning. To be explicit, it is the argument from mind in man to
mind in the world, implied in the Phacdo 98-99. The nature of Zeus, 30 D 1,
is the iravros awpa of 30 A 6, the body of the universe of Tim. 30 B. The kingly
soul and mind is the world-soul and mind of the Timaeus. 8lcl rr)v tt) s atrtas
8vvaiJ.LV is practically equivalent to 8lol ttjv tov 0eoO .... irpovoiav , Tim . 30 B.
The Demiurgus of the Timaeus is an embodiment of the principle of cause.
For this interpretation cf. my Diss ., p. 54, n. 4; ‘‘Recent Platonism,” p. 295;
Unity , p. 65, n. 510 (somewhat too loosely) the atrtas 8vvap.LV = the Demiur¬
gus. It apparently was nearly the view of Pico de Mirandola, who says, “Thus
Plato in Philebus avers ‘By Jove is understood a regal soul, meaning the prin¬
cipal part of the world which governs the other.’ This opinion, though only
my own, I suppose is more true than the exposition of the Grecians.” Cf.
Bury, ad loc. (1897), “Zeus is not to be confounded with the Demiurgus”;
Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (1886), pp. 46-47, “On account of the
power of the cause that we must say a kingly intellect evinces itself as in¬
herent in the nature of the divine mind.” Cf. Cudworth, True Intellectual
System of the Universe, II, 407, “Wherefore in the nature of Jupiter is at once
contained both a kingly Mind and a kingly Soul.” Cf. Wil., I, 640, “Da ist
Zeus die Weltseele”; Jowett, IV, 573, loosely, “Because there is in him the
power of the cause”; Ritter, “Die konigliche Seele des Zeus ist also die Welt¬
seele des Timacos .”

Belong to the boundless: Cf. supra, p. 1 1, Seneca Ep. IX. 5. 24; and infra ,
pp. 609-10.

31 AB Have their seat in the mixed: The difficulties that have been raised
about this are mere blunders. Cf. AJP, IX (1888), 284.

31 D ff. Its restoration pleasure: Cf. 42 D; Tim. 64 CD, 66 C. Implied
perhaps “already” in Cratyl. 419 C. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1173 b 9.

Cf. Rignano, Biological Memory , p. 143; Hobbes, Leviathan, 1, 6: “Pleasure
seemeth to be a corroboration of vital motion and a help thereunto”; Leslie
Stephens, Science of Ethics , p. 83. But cf. p. 88 with 43 AB, 32 AB.

33 DE Unperceived or unconscious: Cf 43 BC f. Theaet. 186 C 2; Tim .
45 D, 67 B 3; Rep . 462 C 12, 584 C 4; Lam 673 A 3; Lucret II. 137-38,
II. 312, III. 649, IV. 1 12; Archytas, frag. 1 (Diels). Cf. Montgomery, St. Au¬
gustine, p. 109, “He defines sensation as ‘passio corporis per se ipsam non la-
tens animam.’ ”

34 For what is lacking: Cf. Metastasio’s ‘Talma quel che non ha sogna e
figura.” Cf. Symp. 201, 203-4.

35 CD The principle of life: apxv- Cf. Phaedr. 245 CD: Laws 895 B.

36 A Accompanied by expectation: Cf. Phaedo Go B; Gorg. 496 E. Ar.
Rhet. 1370 b 7-10; Hobbes, Leviathan, V, “Others arise from expectation,
etc.”; Guyau, Esqiiisse d}u?ie morale, p. 37.

He errs wilfully: Landor, Plato’s enemy, admits this of all Plato’s “falla¬
cies.”

PHILEBUS— NOTES

609

Of the world of ideas: Cf. Rep . 509, 510, 514 ff., the allegory of the cave.

To be fulfilled: Phileb. 39 E, 40 C. Cf. “We are all imaginative, for images
are the brood of desire” (George Eliot). Cf. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena
of the Human Mind , I, 239. Cf. also supra on 20 E ff.

Illusions of distance: Cf. Prot. 356 C 5; Rep. 368 D 3, 523 C3; Theaet.
191 B 4.

38 C Dim thing is a man: Cf. Ross, Aristotle , pp. 138, 166. Hicks, Ar.

11 De an.f p. 471 (418 a 20-21), calls it a KCLTa.avixPefir\K6s — aicrdrjTOV. Cf. I he-
mist. De an. II .6 (Teubner, p. 106); Simplic. De an. 127-28; von Arnim,
Stoics , II, 67 (by implication); Hobhouse, Development and Purpose , p. 69;
Grote, Aristotle , I, 107; Alexander called such propositions at 7rapa <j)V(TLV
TpocfracreLS.

38E-39 A Book: Cf. the wax tablet of Theaet. 191 CD.

39 B Artist: Grote, expecting the modern atomistic order: sensation, im¬
age, idea, judgment, is surprised that in Phileb. 39 memory and sensation
first write Xoyct in the soul, and that, second, a painter supervenes who paints
images of these Xoyot and the corresponding So£ai. But it is characteristic
of Plato to put the image after the idea, the word, and the judgment every¬
where. Moreover, the images here are not the primary images of perception,
which are included in Plato’s aiaOrjais, but imaginative visualizations of be¬
liefs and hopes. In the mature human mind this is probably the real order:
(1) sensation (perception), (2) action or faint verbal judgments or both (3)
vivifying of specially interesting judgments by imaginative visualization. Cf.
Shorey , Class. Phil., XI (1916), 346; Longinus XV. I; Papers in Honor of
Titchener , p. 12, “Sometimes the meaning appears to precede the image”;
Delacroix, Le langage et la pensee , pp. 430-31 ; Binet, Lame et le corps, p. 149,
“La direction de la pensee precede alors sa realisation en images”; Leslie
Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 62, “The sight of a red flag may deter me from
crossing a rifle range without calling up to my imagination all the effects of a
bullet traversing my body.”

39 E 6 Teem with hopes: Cf. Ale. I 105 E 6; Choricius, Teubner, p. 28,
1. 16.

41 E Measure them rightly: Cf. Prot. 356 D-357 B ff . Cf. also on Euthyph.
7 C.

43 A Wise men: Evidently Heracliteans and materialists. Cf. Cratyl. 402,
439; Theaet. 152, 160, 179; Soph. 249; Phaedo 89. For avu Karoo, both literal
and mischievously idiomatic, cf. Gorg. 481 D E, 511 A; Rep. 5°8 D; Minos
316 C; Epin. 989 A; Phaedr. 272 B, 278 D; Theaet. 153 D; Tim. 58 B; Aris-
toph. Equ. 866 (Blaydes); Eurip. Bacchae 349; Here. Fur. 953.

44 BC Other wise men: Conjectures range from Democritus and Antis-
thenes to Pythagorizing friends of Plato. But cf. on Soph. 242 C.

44 CD Release from pain: Cf. Unity, . p. 24: “Both the physiology and
the psychology of this doctrine have been impugned. It has been argued that,
up to the point of fatigue, the action of healthy nerves involves no pain, and
must yield a surplus of positive sensuous pleasure. It is urged that the present
uneasiness of appetite is normally more than counterbalanced by the anticipa¬
tion of immediate satisfaction. Such arguments will carry no weight with

6io

WHAT PLATO SAID

those who accept Plato’s main contention, that the satisfactions of sense and
ambition, however inevitable, have no real worth, and that to seek our true
life in them is to weave and unweave the futile web of Penelope.” Cf. Selden,
Table Talk , p. liv: “Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain, the
enjoying of something I am in great trouble for till I have it”; Guyau, Es-
quisse d unc morale , p. 37 : “Ce n’est qu’a partir d’un certain degre que le
besoin devient souflfrance.”

46 A The scratching of an itch: Cf. 51 CD; Gorg. 494 E; Xen. Mem . I. 2.
3°~3I-

46D-47 Very extravagant language: Cf. Phaedr. 251-52. Plato’s untrans¬
latable subtle development of it may be compared with Menander, frag. 23,
Halieis (Kock): arjirop vtto rrjs Tjdovrjs.

47 CD Of the mixture: Cf. 36 A; Xen. Hiero I. 5; Rep. IX. 584 C. Plato
always knew that pleasure is strictly speaking of the soul, though it may be
said to come through the body. Cf. 39 D, t&v 8lcl tov aco/zaros i)bov&v. So 45 B;
Phaedo , 65 A; Tim. 64 A; Rep. 485 D\ Phileb. 45 A, at irepi to aco/za. So Phaedr.
258 E. Cf. Cratyl. 404 A; Rep. 442 A; Tim. 64 A; Phileb. 41 C 7; Rep. 583
E 9; Phileb. 47 E-50 D, 46 C, 47 CD; Gorg . 496 E. Cf. Unity , p. 46.

48 D Phthonos: The Greek word which has no precise English equivalent
puzzles Grote (III, 35^)* But c I Shakes., Henry VI , Part IJ, Act II, scene iv,
“The abject people gazing on thy face / With envious looks, laughing at thy
shame,” and Keats’s “envious race.”

49 D 11 Even of our friends: For 5o£oao01a, cf. Laws 863 C, 56^ aortas.
Cf. on Lysis 218 AB.

49 C On the comic stage: Cf. on Laws 816 D. So a recent writer defines
humor as the perception of incongruities that is not immediately harmful.

50 A Commingled with our pleasures: Cf. Shelley, “Our sincerest laughter
with some pain is fraught”; Byron’s well-known version of Lucretius* (IV.
II33“34) “Medio de fonte leporum/surgit amari aliquid” ; Leslie Stephen,
Science of Ethics , p. 235, “The hatred .... is always a more or less painful
emotion”; and Santayana’s subtle observation to the effect that man as a
rational being cannot really enjoy the incongruities of the ludicrous.

51 D Itch: cf. on Gorg. 494 D. The comment of Wil., I, 636 that Plato
prefers an eicosahedron to the Aphrodite of Praxiteles misses the point. Plato
is not here thinking of that issue. Cf. James, Psychology , II, 468, 470. Ar.
Poetics 1448 b 19, tt)v xpoiav; Rep. 601 B.

53 C Is a genesis: Cf. Grote, III, 378. The argument that pleasure is
yeveais not ovaia is not, as Zeller says (p. 604), the nerve of the proof. It is
obviously, as the language of 53 C implies, one of those half-serious meta¬
physical and rhetorical confirmations (cf. on Phaedo 78 B) used to make a
strong case where Plato’s feelings are enlisted. It does not occur explicitly in
the Republic , which speaks, however, of pleasure as KivrjGLs (583 E). Aristotle
is at great pains to refute that. Cf. De an. 406 a.

53 D-54 Distinguish generally : This classification of all things is no more
a new metaphysics than the quadripartite classification, supra > p. 606. The
elaborate introduction of the familiar idea eVe/ca tov (cf. on Laches 185 D;

PHILEBUS— NOTES

611

Ar. Pol. 1 333 a 22) shows that such introductions cannot be used to date the
dialogues. Cf. on Cratyl. 390 C 11, and the distinction of right opinion and
knowledge in Tim. 51 D. Lafontaine (Le plaisir d' a pres Platon et Aristote^ p.
8) makes metaphysics out of the logic here.

53 D Relation of the lover to the beloved: Cf. Ar. Met. 1072 b 3, Kivel 8e cos
epkpevov.

56 DE With concrete numbers: The ancients had no exact equivalent of
our “concrete” and “abstract.” Plato says “unequal monads” and in Rep.
525 D 7, “numbers having visible and tangible bodies.” Cf. Unity , p. 83;
Class. Phil., XXII, 213 ff.

Sameness and similar ideas: A virtual description of Aristotle’s Metaphys¬
ics.

58 C Pursuit of truth: Cf. Huxley apud Thomson, Introd. to Science , p. 22,
“The longer I live .... the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act
of a man’s life is to say and feel, ‘I believe such and such to be true.’ All
the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about
that act.” Cf. on Laws 730 C; Phaedo 91 C. Cf. Ar. Met. 983 A 10.

59 A Not with eternal realities: Cf. Tim. 37 E. Eurip., frag. 902, and ora¬
tors of science aliter. Cf. Rep. on stars, 529-30, with 59 A 11.

58 D Dialectics: That is the meaning; the word is not used. Cf. on Laws
9 66 C; on Charm. 155 A; and on Meno 75 CD. Cf. Rep. 533 B-D; Ar. Met.
982 b 27.

59 C The same and unmixed: Is not this a distinct reference to the Ideas?
Cf. Symp. 21 1 B. Cf. on Polit. 269 D 5. Cf. Shorey in AJP , IX, 285 for the
ideas in the Philebus. Cf. Raeder, pp. 370-71.

Animals: Cf. Heraclitus, KeKoprjVTai oKcoairep KTrjvea ; Diels, I3, 83, frag. 29;
Xen. Mem. IV. 5. 11; Boethius III. 7; Cic. Be fin. II. 33 (Reid); Ar. Rhet.
1362 b 6, Eth. 1095 b 20. Cf. St. Augustine’s “Vitium hominis natura peco-
ris”; Emerson, Montaigne , “I do not press the scepticism of the materialist.
I know the quadruped opinion will not prevail. ’Tis of no importance what
bats and oxen think.”

TIMAEUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baeumker, C., Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophies pp.
115-88.

Bignone, E., “II Pensiero platonico e il Timeof Atene e Roma, XIII (1910),
215-44.

Frank, E., Platon nnd die sogenannten Pythagoreer. Halle (Saale), 1923.
Friedlander, II, 599-620.

Grote, IV, 215-64.

Martin, T. H., Etudes sur le “Timee” de Platon. 2 vols. Paris, 1841.
Natorp, pp. 355-76.

Raeder, pp. 374-94*

Ritter, II, 258-87.

- , Neue Untersuchungen iiber Platon, pp. 174-82.

Rivaud, A., Platon, (Euvres completes. Tome X: Timee-Critias . Paris, 1925.
Rorin, L., Etudes sur la signification et la place de la physique dans la philo¬
sophic de Platon . Paris, 1919.

Sachs, Eva, Die junj Platonischen Korper (“Philologische Untersuchungen,”
Heft 24). Berlin, 1917.

Shorey, P., “The Interpretation of the Timaeus f Amer. Jour. Philol., IX
(1888), 395-418.

- , “The Tunaeus of Plato,” ibid., X (1889), 45-78.

- , “On ‘Coming To Be’ and ‘Passing Away,' ” Class. Phil., XVII (1922),

334-53*

- , “Recent Interpretations of the Timaeusf ibid., XXIII (1928),

343-62.

■ - , Diss., pp. 32, 54.

- , “Recent Platonism,” pp. 278, 282, 294 ff.

- , Platonism and the History oj Science , passim.

Taylor, Plato, pp. 436-62.

- , A Commentary on Plato s “ Timaeus .” Oxford, 1928.

Zeller, pp. 719-817.

NOTES

Science of his day: The fanciful hypothesis that he is consciously and sys¬
tematically reproducing the Pythagorean science of the fifth century is re¬
jected by Friedlander, II, 605-7; Bury; Rivaud, Bude Timee, notice p. 6. Cf.
Shorey, AJP , X, 354.

Over mechanism or necessity: Cf. 30 AB, 32 C, 33 D, 34 A, 37 D, 37 E. Cf.
Phi/eh. 30 B 6; Ar. Part. An. 639 b 21, 646 b 28, 665 b 12, and passim; cf.
38 C, 39 B, 40 B, 44 E, 45 A, 53 B, 68 E-69 A, 69 E, 70 C, 70-71, 71 D, 72 E,

TIMAEUS— NOTES 613

73 D, 74 B, 74 C, 75 B, with James, Psychology , I, 107; 75 BC, 75 D, 75 E-
76 A, 76 C, 76 D, 76 E, 77 A, 78 B, 79 A.

Timaeus of Locri: A supposed Pythagorean philosopher who, Cicero says,
was “heard” by Plato in Italy ( De fin. V. 29; De rep. I. 10. Cf. Diels, I3, 339.
Cf. Suidas, s.v.). Erich Frank, p. 129, thinks he represents Archytas. The
extant work Ilepi t/'ux&s kop/ios, Hermann, Plato , IV, 407- 21, is a late abridg¬
ment in Doric dialect of Plato’s Timaeus , which may have helped to confirm
the legend of Plato’s plagiarism from Pythagorean books. Cf. J. R. W. Anton,
De origine libelli, Ilept \£vxas KovfJia) Kal (frva'i os (Naum burg, 1891); Ueberw.-
Pr., p. 45*.

22 B Eternal children: Endlessly quoted and misquoted.

Intelligent men : Cf. Menex. 237 D; Prot. 319 B 4, 337 D 6; Epin. 987 D;
Rep. 435 E 7 (Loeb); Eurip. Medea 842; Isoc. 7. 74.

26 B Memories: Burnet, Taylor, and Hans Herter ( Bonner Jahrb., Heft
133, p. 28) insist that this Critias must be the grandfather of the Critias who
was a member of the Thirty, because Solon’s poems were new in his boyhood
and because he is too old to remember recent impressions.

30 A Pre-existent chaos: Cf. Sytnp. 178 B, 195 C; Polit. 273 D 6; infra ,
48 B, 53 A, 69 AB, 52 D flF.

37 A Platonic logic: This obvious fact, strangely denied by some modern
scholars, is clearly stated by “Alcinous” XIV (Hermann, VI, 169). Cf. Shorey,
Class. Phil., XXI 1 1, 344-45; JJP> IX> 298 and X, 51-52.

34 BC Body of the world in it: Cf. infra on 36 E.

37 D Moving image of eternity: Cf. Vaughan’s “I saw eternity the other
night, etc.,” and Emerson, Uriel , “Or ever the wild time coined itself / Into
calendar months and days.”

27 C Invokes the gods: Cf. Laws 712 B, 893 B; Crit. 108 D; Boethius III. 9.

Cicero’s interpretation begins at 27 D. Cf. Rhein. Mas., LIV, 555.

28 AB An artisan models: Cf. Cratyl. 389; Spenser, An Hymn in Honour
of Beauty:

What Time this world’s Great Work Master did cast
To make all things such as we now behold,

It seems that he before his eyes had placed
A goodly pattern, to whose perfect mould
He fashioned them as comely as he could.

28 AB Eternal pattern: For the “Platonic Ideas” in the Timaeus cf. 30 C,
33 B, 38 AB, 48 E, 50 C, 51 B; Unity , p. 37. For “pattern” cf. on Euthyph.
6 E.

28 C Maker and father: Endlessly quoted and misquoted.

29 B Probable tale: Cf. 48 D, 56 A, 68 D 2; Shorey, AJP, IX (1888), 413-

14, 406-7; Howald, EIK02 A0F02, Hermes, LVII (1922), 63-79. P- 7 3.

anticipated by Shorey, AJP, X, 62. Cf. Boethius III. n with Chaucer, Pro-
logue, 743:

Eke Plato sayeth whoso can him rede
The wordes moste been cousin to the dede.

29 D Must be content: Cf. Cic. Tusc. I. 9, “Ut homunculus unus e mul-
tis”; Arnold, “Literature and Science,” Discourses in America , p. 100.

WHAT PLATO SAID

614

29 E He is good: Endlessly quoted.

30 B Order is best: Cf. 52 D ff., 53 AB, 69 B; Polit. 273; Symp. 178 B.

31 C, 32 Unifying proportion: For avvayooyov cf. Symp. 191 D; Prot. 322 C.
The proportion of surfaces or square numbers is

a2:ab = ab:b3; e.g., 4:6 = 619 .

For cubic numbers it is

a> : a2b — a2b \ab!1=ab2\fc-, e.g., 8:12 = 12:18 = 18: 27.

Cf. Euclid VIII. prop. 1 1 and 12, said by Nicomachus to have been discovered
by Plato: E. Hoppe, Math, und Astron. im klass. Alterthum , pp. 79-80: Bury,
p. 58: Apelt, p. ji; and on the whole subject Taylor, Tim., pp. 66-99. Plato
plays with mathematics to produce a show of a priori proof that the elements
must be four and capable of transmutation into one another. They are solids,
and two solids can be linked in continued geometric proportion only by two
intermediate terms. The details of Plato’s mathematical illustrations are
rarely if ever needed for the apprehension of his meaning.

33 B Nothing outside: Cf. Lucret. V. 361; Diog. L. X. 39; Melissus, frag.
4, Diels I3 187; Simpl. Phys. 102.

33 C Air to be breathed: Apparently a rejection of pre-Socratic fancies,
whether of Anaximenes or of the Pythagoreans. Cf. Taylor, Tim., p. 320.

33 D Give it hands and feet: Hence Aristotle’s statements that God and
Nature do nothing in vain ( De caelo 271 a 33, etc.).

34 A Revolving upon itself: Cf. on 43 E and Laws 898 A.

34 A Eternal God: Cf. AJP, IX, 297 and 417-18. Plato is not always care¬
ful to distinguish God, the Demiurgus, and the lesser gods. Cf. 69 B 3, 71 A 7,
78 B 2, 80 E 1, etc.

36 C Outer circle: That is, the daily apparent revolution of the heavens.

36 C To the right: “Right” and “left” are no more absolute terms for
Plato than “up” and “down” or “light” and “heavy.” Cf. on Phaedo 112 E;
Rep. 584 DE. Cf. Laws 760 CD; Polit. 270 B ff.; Phaedr. 2 66 A; Soph. 264 E;
Epin. 987 B 5; Ar. De caelo 2.2. Cf. AJP , X, 55.

36 C Contrary movements: That is, of the moon, sun, and planets on the
ecliptic.

36 D The inner circle: That is, the ecliptic.

36 D Three: Mercury, Venus, Sun.

36 D Four: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Moon. The speeds are angular. Cf.
T. L. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos , p. 157. Cf. also Epin. 987 B and Laws
822 A-C; Rep. 617 B 2.

40 D Orrery: Cf. AJP, X, 58 ;Epist. II. 312 D; Cic. Nat. deor. II. 3; Tusc .
I. 25, 63; De rep. I. 14; Mayor on Cic. Nat. deor. II. 88; Hultsch, Pauly-
Wissowa, II, 537-38, 1853-54, § 18; Boll, Stoicheia, Heft VIII (1927), 17 ff.

39 D Perfect year: Cic. De fin. II. 31, Nat. deor . II. 20. Calculations of
this great year would depend on the calculator’s knowledge of the movements
of the planets. Cf. Zeller, pp. 81 1, 842; Phaedr. 257 A 1 ;Rep. 615 C (Loeb).

TIMAEUS— NOTES

6i5

36 E Framed within it: Rep. 529 D (Loeb) ; AJPy IX, 297; Berkeley, S iris ,
§ 285, “Speak of the world as contained by the soul and not the soul by the
world”; Sir John Davies, “Some say she’s not contained but all contains.”
Cf. on Phaedo 70 A with 77 C; Cratyl. 400 A; Ar. De an. 41 1 b 9; and contra
Lucret. III. 440-4 1.

37 C In a soul: For the polemic against materialism cf. Soph. 247 C;
Laws 892; Epin. 983 CD.

37 C Created image: Agalma need not mean “image.” In any case the
rhetoric of religious unction is not to be pressed. In 92 C the preferable text is
vorjTov , not ttoltjtov. Cf. Epin. 983 E 6.

36 D 8 In accordance with his mind: Cf. Milton, Par. Lost , XII, “How
good, how fair, answering his great Idea.”

37 D As jar as possible: Plato rarely omits this reservation.

40 B Choric dances: Cf. Epin. 982 C; Phaedr. 247 A (symbolically);
Goethe, Fausty Prolog im Himmel; Bryant’s Song of the Stars; and Sir John
Davies, Orchestra.

40 BC Earth , our nurse: The interpretation given is substantially that of
Boeckh, Kleine Schriften , III, 294 ff.; Martin, II, 86 ff.; Zeller, p. 809, n. 2,
Schiaparelli, Precursori di Copernico , p. 14; Bury in Loeb; and of Shorey in
AJP, X, 58. I should say that it was certain, but for the ambiguity of Aris¬
totle’s interpretation, Be caelo 293 b 30, and the enormous literature of con¬
troversy. Cf. Burnet, Greek Phil.y Thales to Plato , p. 348; Wil., I, 607; Eva
Sachs, Die fiinf Plat. Korper , p. 125; E. Frank, Platon u. d. sog. Pythagoraer ,
pp. 205 ff.; Taylor, Tim.y p. 227.

40 D Their descendants: Some critics, ancient and modern, miss the ob¬
vious irony of this. Cf. on Phaedr. 246 CD.

41 A Stately speech: “Gods of gods” is rhetoric. Cf. on Rep. 569 C 3
(Loeb).

41 B Not inherently immortal: Similarly some of the Christian Fathers on
the soul, as, e.g., Tatian and Arnobius. Cf. Cic. Nat. deor. I. 8; III. 12.

41 D Whence they came: Cf. Aesch. Choeph. 128; Lucret. V. 259; Milton,
“The womb of nature and perhaps her grave”; Tennyson, Lucretius , “Womb
and tomb of all.”

43 A 6 Influx and efflux: Cf. 44 A, 80 DE; Gorg. 494 AB; Symp. 207 D;
Huxley’s comparison of the living organism to a whirlpool.

42 E Abided: Hence the neo-Platonic paradox that the creative power of
the divine goes forth yet remains unimpaired. Cf. Zeller, III, ii, 551-52; Boe¬
thius Cons. Phil. III. C. 9. 3; and Milton’s “For he also went invisible yet
stayed.”

43 E Circles: Whatever may or may not have been the fancies of Alc-
maeon and other Presocratics, it is uncritical to attribute to Plato a literal
doctrine of circles in the brain. The circles are obviously symbolic of thought
revolving on itself. Cf. 34 A, 37 A, 40 AB, 42 C, 47 D, 77 B. We do not take
literally Emerson’s frequent references to the divine “circuits” or “circula¬
tions.”

6i6

WHAT PLATO SAID

44 A Enchained in a mortal body: Plato thus, as Mill already points out
(p. 303), contradicts the sentimental Platonism of Wordsworth’s Ode and of
Mrs. Browning’s neo-Platonic

Murmurs of the outer infinite
That unweaned babies smile at in their sleep.

Cf. infra , 86 E; Phaedo 81 C, 83 D; Cic. Tusc. I. 24. 58.

44 E Flexible limbs: Cf. Lucret. IV. 827; Phaedo 98 CD; and for the hu¬
mor Symp. 190 B.

44 C Unbettered: Lit., incomplete, uninitiated.

45 B-46 C Physical details: As Plato, like Aristotle, knew nothing of the
nerves or the structure of the brain, his physiological optics can have for us
only an interest of curiosity. The curious will find the details in J. J. Beare,
Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition , pp. 44 ff.; Zeller, p. 861, n. 3; Martin,
I 157-71, 291-94; and for Aristotle’s hostile criticism, Be sensu 437 b. Cf.
Taylor on Tim., pp. 276-90. Vision is effected by a conjunction or coalescence
(the later avuav yeca) of an emanation from the light within the eye and an
emanation or reflection from the illuminated object. The temporary rod thus
formed operates as a nerve, so to speak, to transmit the impression to
the seat of consciousness. Though the Meno ridicules Gorgian or Empedoclean
phraseology, Plato lapses into it here. Cf. Meno 76 D and Tim. 67 C.

46 C 7 " Secondary _ causes: Phaedo 99 AB; Unity, p. 61, n. 461 ; Pope,

Dunciad in fine:

Philosophy that leaned on heaven before
Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.

47 AB Had never seen: Cf. 39 B ; Epin. 978 D, 977 A; Thompson, Outline
of Science, 1, 179: “If our earth had been so clouded that the stars were hidden
from men’s eyes, the whole history of our race would have been different.”

47 E Mainly: The physiology and physics of vision, 45 B-47 B, is the
exception.

Recalcitrant necessity: For avay kt) cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., XXIII (1928),
356, 361. In the Timaeus it is almost technical for mechanistic as opposed to
final causes. Cf. 42 A, 46 B 1, 46 E 2, 47 E 4, 48 A, 5b C 5> 68 B y, 69 CD,
75 A, 75 D. So also in Xen. Mem. I. 1. n and frequently in Aristotle. Plato’s
rhetoric sometimes represents mechanical causes as irrational, accidental, be¬
cause not designed. Captious critics infer that Plato, like some recent physi¬
cists, admitted pure chance and denied the reign of law in the physical world.
So apparently Grote, IV, 221 , and Mill, IV, 299. Plato’s methods of interpret¬
ing physical causation in the second half of the Timaeus show that this is an
error. Cf., e.g., 52 E, 53 A, 56 C, 57 C, 58 A ff., 59 A, 60 CD, 61 B, 62 CD ff.,
64 B with AJP, X, 72-73; 64-65, 66-67, 67 B, 67 E, 78 ff., 78 BC, 80 A-D.

49A-51 A Space: Plato, like Descartes, seems to identify matter with
extension. Cf. Shorey, Biss., p. 59; Baeumker, p. 177; the images of pattern,
matter and mold, father, mother, and offspring, in which Plato expresses his
conception could be widely illustrated from ancient and modern literature.
There are modern parallels also to the embarrassment which Plato feels in

TIMAEUS— NOTES

6i7

speaking of space. Fie can find no language to contrast its permanency with
the changes of its content that does not seem to put it on a level with the un¬
changing eternity of the ideas. So Henry More {Encheirid. Met.) argues that
infinite space is not merely real but divine, and Berkeley ( Principles , § 117)
speaks of the alternative of thinking “either that real space is God or that
there is something besides God which is eternal, uncreated, infinite, indivisible,
immutable.” Cf. Zeller, pp. 719-44, esp. pp. 732-33; Taylor, Tim., p. 312;
and the confused controversies to which they refer.

50 E Neutral colorless medium: Cf. Shorey, Harvard Studies , XII, 204.
The medium or receptacle is the eKiiayeiov, the wax or mold ( Theaet . 191 C).
Cf. Chalcidius (Wrobel, p. 337), “Ut cera, quae transfigurata in multas diver-
sasque formas non ipsa vertitur.”

51 C Mere words : Cf. Eurip. Ion 275 with Medea 325; Isoc. XV. 100;
Thucyd. VIII. 78; Cic. Tusc. I. 10, “Nomen totum inane.” Archer-Hind’s
“whereas it was nothing but a conception” is incorrect.

51 E A few: Or, perhaps, “only a little.” Cf. Phaedr. 248 B, 250 A 2;
Laws 653 A 7 ff. Hobbes, Leviathan , 5, “And the most part of men though
they have the use of reason a little way .... yet it serves them to little use.”

52 B Our faith: Cf. Alexander, Space , Time and Deity , I, 37; II, 49, 147.

53 Recently discovered: Supposedly by Theaetetus. Cf. Eva Sachs, De
Theaeteto mathematico .

Triangles: Cf. Meyerson, De I explication dans les sciences , II, 27; Watson,
Science as Revelation , p. 55. Plato’s atomism is obviously nearer the most re¬
cent hypotheses than is that of Democritus.

52 E IV innowing fan: Cf. Burnet, Greek Phil., Thales to Plato , p. 99, “The
image of a sieve which brings the grains of millet, wheat and barley together.
As this image is found also in Plato’s Timaeus (52 E) it is probably of Pythag¬
orean origin.” Cf. Democ. apud Sext. Empir. Math. VII. 117-18; Diog. L.
IX. 31; Diels, frag. 164; Spencer on “Segregation,” First Principles , §§ 163-
65; Heath, Eng. Jour, of Phil., VIII, 162, “It is remarkable that Plato sees the
dynamical reason of the thing; while Democritus, etc.”

53B2 Traces: Plato’s imagination accepts the chaos of early thought
and the pre-Socratics. God does not create out of nothing. He is Ovid’s mundi
melioris origo (cf. Frank E. Robbins, “The Creation Story in Ovid Met. I,
Class. Phil., VIII, 400 flf.). Literal-minded critics vainly try to reconcile this
antecedent chaos of moving inchoate elements with the doctrine that soul is
the only source of motion {Phaedr. 245 CD; Laws 895 B 3, 896 B 3), and the
theory that the elements exist only as geometrical forms.

54 B Concede him the prize: Cf. supra, 48 C. This is
Plato’s meaning for himself and for us today. The
details of his obsolete science may be studied elsewhere.

The passage is perhaps the source of the statement in
the Christian Fathers and the Middle Ages that Plato
said that his authority could tell a greater or a better
cause.

53 CD Isosceles triangle: Four of these, as in the figure, make a square.

6i8

WHAT PLATO SAID

54 B That scalene: Two of ABC form one, XYZ> and six of the ABC type
form another equilateral, LMN .

p. 294, explains by Phaedo 1 10 B. Modern scientific analogies are obvious and
will be considered elsewhere. Meanwhile cf. the fancies of Tycho Brahe apud
Preserved Smith, History of Modern Culture , I, 228.

79 D ff Respiration: I have given the essential meaning. Commentators
will never agree as to the precise interpretation of these obscure pages. Cf.
Galen and others apud Archer-Hind, Bury (Loeb), Jowett, Rivaud (Bude),
and Taylor, Timaeus. Plato aims at a complete explanation in terms of mech¬
anism (avay kk), 79 B 5) guided by purpose (79 A 6, 78 B 2). As he could know
nothing of the real causes of respiration, it is not strange that he did not quite
succeed. He at one point smuggles in direct divine intervention (78 D 3).
The chain of physical causation is not quite traceable, and the imagery, the
comparison (79 D 2), with which he introduces and illustrates the process
(78 B ff.) no more admits of completely consistent visualization than does the
astronomical imagery of the myth of Er ( Rep . 616 B ff.) or modern theories
of the ether and the atom according to the criticism of Stallo and Meyerson
and the admissions of their inventors. God fashioned and applied to or in¬
serted in the body a network of fire and air (and?)
two weels which he caused to flow gently into one
\ another. Martin, Apelt, Archer-Hind, and Bury (on
k * 78 B) illustrate by slightly varying diagrams. Taylor,
• [ without a diagram, gives some twenty pages of des-
1 j cription with the conclusion (p. 564) that “the
• theory .... will not really hang together.” It is, in
fact, impossible to determine how far these “wreels”
are to be identified with the respiratory system
and the alimentary canal, and how far they are anticipatory symbols of them.
It seems to be said that they are inserted into the body. So reversely the
heavenly bodies are inserted into the celestial motions. Cf. supra on 34 BC,
36 E, and Rep. 529 D.

1 /
1 1
1 1
» \

TIMAEUS— NOTES

619

84 B Sacred disease: Apparently a retort to Hippocrates’ everlastingly
quoted rationalistic protest that all diseases or none are “sacred.” Cf. Littre,

VI, 352.

Absurdities: Typical is the account of LaHarpe in his once widely read
lectures on literature. Bacon had preceded him in this vein. Lange’s History
of Materialism (I, 79 and passim) and Lewes’s Biographical History of Philoso¬
phy have been innocently taken as authoritative by many men of science.
They are all anticipated, including Herbert Spencer’s gibe at the “carpenter
theory of creation” or Voltaire’s at the compasses of Milton’s Creator, by the
Epicurean Velleius in Cic. Nat. deor. I. 8-10. Even Mill writes in the same
strain (IV, 235). No criticism provoked by the odium theologicum was ever
more unfair than Grote’s (IV, 276). Even the dainty Santayana, moved by
his hatred of teleology, descends to the same level, and writes that Plato as¬
sures us that the intestines are long in order that we may have leisure between
meals to study philosophy.

69 D Hope: Cf. my paper on Thucyd. in TAPA> XXIV (1893), 71 ff.,
and my article “Hope” in Hastings’ Diet.

Swinburne: Cf. Edwin Markham,

Is this then the pain that the first gods kneaded
Into all the joy that the strange world brings?

Did the tears fall into the heap unheeded,

These tears in mortal things?

Difference between man and god: This is the only case where Plato seems to
oppose specific scientific inquiry. Cf. Platonism and the History of Science ,
p. 162, n. 2.

Details: Cf. AJP , IX, 409-11.

Anthropomorphic poets: Laws 901 A 7; Tim. 29 E; Phaedr . 247 B; Rep .
377 D ff-

Transformed into action: Cf. 38-39, 62-63, 65-66, 68, 71, 74, 81, 84, 85,
and more particularly 63 C, 66 C, 68 A, 77 D, 80 E, 89 B, 33 C, 57 C.

Limitations of necessity: 30 A, 32 B, 37 D, 38 B, 42 E, 46 C, 48 A, 53 B,
56 C, 68 E, 69 B, 71 D, 75 AB.

CRITIAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Friedlander, I, Exkurs II (on Atlantis), 270-75; II, 621-22.
Grote, IV, 265-71.

Raeder, pp. 374-94 (including the Timaeus).

Taylor, pp. 461-62.

Wil amo witz, I, 592-98.

ON THE ATLANTIS QUESTION

Berger, in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. “Atlantis.”

Bessmertny, Alexander, Das Atlantisrdtsel: Geschichte and Erkldrung der
Atlantishypothesen. (With Bibliography.) Leipzig, 1932.

Couissin, P., L’Atlantide de Platon. Aix-en-Provence, 1928.

- , “Le my the de 1’Atlantide,” Mercure de France , CXCIV (1927), 29-71.

Full Bibliography on p. 29, n. 1.

Demm, G., 1st die Atlantis in Platons “ Kritias ” eine poetische Fiktion? Progr.
Straubling, 1905.

Frost, K. T., ‘The Critias and Minoan Crete,3 ” Jour. Hell. Stud., XXXIII
(1913), 189-206.

Frutiger, P., Les myt/ies de Platon , pp. 244-49. Paris, 1930.

Gattefosse, Jean and Roux, Cl., Bibliographic de V Atlantide. Lyon, 1926.
Herter, H., “Platons Atlantis,” Bonner Jahrbucher, CXXXIII (1928), 28-
47, with extensive Bibliography.

Martin, H., Etudes sur le “ Timie ” de Platon (2 vols.), I, n. XIII, p. 257 ff.
Paris, 1841.

Rivaud, A., Timee-Critias . Paris, 1925. Reviewed by Shorey, Class. Phil.,
XXI (1926), 374.

Weber, L., “Platons 'A tKclvtikos und sein Urbild,” Klio, XXI (1927), 245-87.

NOTES

Plato' s later style: Erich Frank, p. 2^7, dates it 353, and Taylor thinks that
it is later than the Timaeus and was published without revision.

Of Syracuse: Cf. Gunnar Rudberg, “Atlantis og Syrakusae,” Eranos, 1917 ,
pp. 1-80.

108 AB In his turn: For this banter between successive speakers cf. Symp.
193 E-194 A. Cf. 108 B 4 with Symp. 194 A 6.

108 E Nine thousand years ago: An alleged contradiction with Tim. 23 E.

109 B Supervision of the world: Cf. Pindar Pyth. IX. 32-41; Jebb, JHS,
III, 152; Aeschylus Eumenides, init .; Euthyph. 6 B 8.

Their possessions: CLPhaedoGi B 8 and D 3; Laws 902 B 8,906 A 7 ;Polit.
274 B 5.

620

CRITIAS— NOTES

621

no B Shared the pursuits of men: Cf. Rep . 451 D ff.; Laws 805-6, 813-14,
8 33 CD> etc.

Described “ yesterday” \ Possibly in the Timaeus or else in the Republic. Cf.
Tim. 17 A 2.

no E On the right: That is, in Attica.

Labor of the soil: Cf. Aristotle’s criticism of the Platonic Laws {Pol. 1265
a 15).

in D Plentiful water: F. Kluge, De Platonis liKritia” (Diss., Hall., Vol.
XIX, p. 2f8, compares Laws 761 A ff. He finds other parallels, some of them
fanciful.

112 C Without gold and silver: Cf. Rep. 416 E, 419 A, 422 D; Laws 742 A,
743 D, 746 A.

112 C Common messes: avavLTLa, Cf. Rep. 416 E, 458 C, 547 D; Laws
762 C, 780 AB, 839 C, and passi?n.

About 20,000: About the number of the free population of Athens in the
fourth century and far greater than the population of the city of the Laws
(737 Eff.).

Represented on a map: Cf. Friedlander, I, Tafeln II and III; Loeb, p. 286.

120 E Yet was full: Cf. Cic. Tusc. I. 12, “. . . . antiquitate; quae quo pro-
pius aberat ab ortu et divina progenie, hoc melius ea fortasse, quae erant vera
cernebat.”

121 C 2 Heaven's centre: Is this Homeric rhetoric {II. IV. 4; XIII, 1, etc.)
to be taken literally and does it then contradict Tim. 40 B 8 ff. and express
Plato’s later view that the earth is not in the centre?

LAWS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apelt, O., Zu Platons Gesetzen. Progr., Jena, 1907.

Barker, E., Greek Political Theory: Plato and His Predecessors , pp. 292-380.
Beauchet, Histoire du droit privS de la republique athenienne . Paris, 1897.
Doring, F., De legum Platonicarum compositione . Diss., Leipzig, 1907.
England, E. B., The “Laws” of Plato. 2 vols. London, 1921. Cf. Shorey's
review, Class. Phil.y XVII (1922), 153-55.

Ferber, J., “Der Lustbegriff in Platons Gesetzen," Neue Jahrb ., XXXI

(I9J3). 338-49-
Friedlander, II, 623-81.

Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers , III, 227-63.

- , “Plat. Aufsatze III,” Die Kompos. d. Ges., Sitz. Ber. d. Wien. Akad.y

CXLV (1902), 1-36.

Grote, IV, 272-420.

Hermann, De vestigiis institutorum veterum imprimis Atticorum per Platonis
“De legibus” libros indagandis.

Natorp, pp. 376-84.

Raeder, pp. 395“4i3-

Ritter, Platony II, 657-796; Pl.s Ges.y Darstellung des Inhalts. Leipzig, 1896.

- , Pl.s Ges. Kom?nentar zum griech. Text ., Leipzig, 1896.

Schulte, Plato de publicis atheniensium institutis. Diss., 1907.

Shorey, P., “Plato's Laws and the Unity of Plato's Thought," Class. Phil.y
IX (1914), 345~69-

- , Review of R. G. Bury's translation of The Laws (“Loeb Class. Libra¬
ry Series"; London, 1926), Class. Phil ., XXIII (1928), 403-5.

- , Notes on: “Laws 697 D," Class. Phil.y XVII (1922), 86-87; “Laws

65 9 B," ibid.y XX (1925), 160; “Laws 822 E," ibid., XXI (1926), 363-64.
Taylor, pp. 463-97*

WlLAMOWITZ, I, 654-704.

Zeller, 946-82.

NOTES

ass Corrupt passages: E.g., 934 C.

Strained transitions: Chiefly in Book XI and in Book XII as far as 958 C.
Plato himself apologizes (922 B 1).

Isocrates: Panegyr., passim.

Plato: Rep. 550 C 6; Laws 743 C 5, 812 A, etc.

Aristotle: Politics y passim. Cf. 1269 a 32.

Ruskinian boutades: Cf. on 829 DE.

356 Repetitions: 659 D, 688 B, 699 C, 733 = 662-63, 740 E, 743 E, 754 C, 770 C,
774 C, 812 A, 822 E, 876 D, 887 B.

622

LAWS— NOTES

623

Digressions: 642 A, 682 E, 701 D, 864 C.

Weakness of old age: 752 A, 770 A, 846 C, 855 D, 957 A.

Self-checks: Cf. on 701 CD.

Self-praise: Cf. 699 D, 768 E, 81 1 CD; Phaedr. 257 C, 263 D, and Gom-
perz III. 21 on 262 C. Cf. Grote IV.323 and 351.

Mannerisms: t&x’ av tcrcos; fj /cat; a/xcos ye 7rcos; rLva rpoicov av; rj 7rcos; to
ye roaovrov.

Censure of Homeric theology: Laws 886 C briefly dismisses this topic. But 357
cf. 636 D and 941 B with Rep . 378 B.

The eighth book: Macaulay, who had little appreciation of Plato’s higher
flights, says, “I remember nothing in Greek philosophy superior to this in
profundity, ingenuity, and eloquence.”

A few explicit references: 727 D, 870 D, 828 D, 881 A, 927 A, 959 B.

To pleasure and pain: 643 E, 653 AB, 659 D, 642 D = Rep. 401 E, 653 B= 358
Rep. 402 A.

Morals by mores: 706 C, 780 A, 788 B, 790 B, 792 E, 822 E, 808 C = 834 D,

659 C, 793 B, 841 B, 659 E. Unwritten law, 841 B, 793 A, 838 B.

Private life: Rep. 426 C; Laws 780 A, 790 B.

Censorship of ... . art: Rep. 377 B — Laws 656 C; 386 B = Laivs 828 D;
3$6B = Laws 669 D; 398 A, 568 BC — Laws 656 C, 817 BC; 399 AB = Z,rtztw
814 E, 660 A, 655 AB, 812 C.

Art to ethics: Plato anticipates Aristotle with cos ev 7rat5tas poipa (656 B)
and forestalls Croce with opoiovoOai .... avayKrj top xaLpovra oirorepoLs av
X^PXl {ibid.). Cf. 669 B, riOrj Kaica (bi\o4>povovpevos, Rep. 395 C, 607 A.

Deprecation of change: 797, 799, 656, 819 A; Rep. 380, 424 C.

Specialization of function: 846 D ff.; cf. Rep. 370 B, 374 A, 394 E, 395,

423 D, 433 A, 553 E.

Discipline and regulation: 942 D; cf. Rep. 563 C; 762, 758, 760 A, 807.

The mean: Even in respect to health, 728 D, 719, 729, 792 C.

Mi xed go vern merit: 712-13,75 7-5 9 .

Unlimited love of money: Rep. 373 E, aireipov , 591 D; Laws 870 A; Ar. Pol.
1256 b 32.

Goods: 717 C, 728 D, 743 E.

Two kinds of equality: Rep. 558 C; Laws 757, 744 C.

Good and the necessary: Shorey, Laws, p. 353, n. 1.

An edifying textbook: Cf. 632 A 2, 81 1 DE, 858 C-E, 957 CD.

Simple-minded interlocutors: 673 C, 644 CD, cf. on 680 C.

626 D 5 Of first principles: Cf. on Laches 185 B 10 and Tim. 48 D.

625 D Topography and climate: Cf. 704-5, 747 CD; Menex. 237 D; and
Rep. 435 E-436 A (Loeb), Epin. 987 D.

Preparedness for war: Cf. 758 B, 829 AB, 803 D, Polit. 307 E, Menex.

246 E; Ar. Pol. 1324 b 8; Hobbes’s Bellum omnium; von Biilow, “Every state
ought to be directed in all its parts as if it would have to sustain a war to¬
morrow.” Similarly Machiavelli.

627 A Idea of self-control: Cf. Gorg. 491 D; Rep. 430E-431 B (Loeb), in¬
fra, 633 D, 841 B 7; Charm. 159 AB and passim; Xen. Mem. IV. iii.i; Eurip.
Bacchae 314-16; Hippol. 79-80.

624

WHAT PLATO SAID

627 B JVe may waive: Cf. 629 A, 633 A, 644 A 6, 710 A, 863 B 3, 864 AB,
938 A; Symp. 173 E; Theaet. 163 C 5, 189 D; Phileb. 23 A; Rep . 373 E; Cratyl.
430 D; Soph. 237 B 10; Unity , p. 85, nn. 643, 644, 645.

627 D To conventional opinion: Cf. 662 A; Rep. 348 E (Loeb); Gorg.
474 ff., 483 DE; Polit. 306 A 10; Isoc. De pace 31.

627 E Government by consent: Cf. 832 C, 690 C, 684 C; Polit. 276 E,
291 E, 293 A, 300 ff. The citizens even of the Republic are not slaves but free¬
men whose rulers are their helpers and guardians (417 B, 547 C).

630 E Is the lowest virtue: Cf. Laches 197 AB; Prot. 349 D, 359 B; infra ,
667 A; Isoc. Panath. 198; Nicocles 43; Friedlander, II, 24.

Perfect justice the highest: There is no contradiction with infra , 631 C 8,
where justice is third in the list of divine goods. For reXea v, perfect injustice
in a different sense, cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1130 b 15, 1098 a 17; Pol. 1271 b 2.

630 E Classify laws: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1267 b 37; Cic. De or. I. 41-42.

631 C Health: Cf. Rep. 591 C (Loeb).

631 C And fourth wealth: Cf. Gorg. 467 E and 451 E; Euthyd. 279 AB.
For “goods” cf. infra on 697 B.

631 C Not the blind (god): Cf. Rep. 554 B 5. Philo adapts the idea. Cf.,
e.g., Philo De vita contemplativa 13 (ed. Cohn and Reiter VI. 49, line 11).
Billings, The Platonism of Philo Judaeus (Chicago, 1919), p- 103, refers to De
praem. 54, irpo tov rvcfriXov top @\ei tovtcl ttXovtov; Sp. leg. II. 23; Fug. et inv. 19.

631 CD And fourth is bravery: On the four virtues cf. infra 688 AB, 963 A,
9 63 C, 696, 965 D; Rep. 427 E ff. (Loeb); Euthyd. 279 BC; Symp. 196 B-D;
Prot. 349 B; on Meno 75 A, 78 D; Rep. 402 C, 536 A; Phaedo 1 15 A. The four
cardinal virtues passed into modern literature through Cicero’s De ofpciis and
St. Augustine. Cf. also Friedlander, II, 375, who refers to Aesch. Septem 610;
Jaeger, Antike , IV, 163; and E. Wolff, Platos “ Apologie ” (“N. ph. U.,” VI, 77).

631 D Must so order them: Cf. 697 AC, 726-27. Cf. the superiority of
soul over body, 731 C, 743 E, 913 B, 959 A; Tim. 88 B; Gorg. 479 BC; Phaedo
79 E-80 B; Rep. 585 D.

632 B Contractual obligations: Cf. infra , 920 D-921 D; Rep. 556 AB; Isoc.
Panath. 144.

632 C The manner of burial: Cf. infra, 958-59; Rep. 465 DE, 469 A,
540 BC.

632 C Others by real knowledge: Cf. infra, 960 ff.; Rep. 506 AB; Unity ,
p. 86, n. 650.

633 A As parts of virtue: Cf. infra , 963 E, 964 A, 863 BC. Cf. on Prot.
329 CD; Unity , p. 42.

633 D Make wax the hearts of the seeming austere: Cf. Rep. 538 D; Tenny¬
son, In Mem., xxi, “This fellow would make weakness weak, / And melt the
waxen hearts of men”; Horace AP 163, “Cereus in vitium flecti.”

633 E By pleasure than by fear: Ar. Eth. Nic. 1119a 25-28.

634 E When youths are absent may criticize them: Cf. Boswell’s Johnson ,
“But if we should discuss it in the presence of ten boarding school girls and
as many boys I think the magistrate would do well to put us in the stocks to
finish the debate there.” Cf. Herod. III. 38 and Laws 637 CD, 951 A; Cic.
Dediv. II. 12, “Sed soli sumus”; De nat. deor. I. 22; Diog. L. II. 1 17 (Stilpo).

LAWS— NOTES

625

636 A Affinn in words: For word and deed cf. 626 A, 679 D, 736 B,
769 E, 717 D, 647 D, 778 B, 879 C, 907 E, 9 35 A; Rep. 382 E, 473 A, 492 D,
498 E, 389 D, 396 A.

638 B Irrelevant proofs: Cf. Eurip., frag. 288, small but just cities are
defeated in war. Cf. Ar. Pol. 1333 b 22; Isoc. Panath . 185 ff. But Archidam.
36 contra. Cf. also Cic. De nat. deor. III. 39 and Gorg. 483 D.

629 C, 640 E Only if it is rightly managed: Cf. on Euthyd. 280E-281 A.
For (TvaaLTLa cf. also 636 A, 649 A, 671 B ff., 780 A ff., 806 E.

640 D Sober and wise: This is one of the features mentioned in Aristotle’s
haphazard enumeration of original points in Plato’s political philosophy (Pol.
1274 b 12). Cf. infra , 671 BC.

641 D Only the assurance of a god: Cf. Tun. 72 D; Rep. 517 B 7; Phaedr.
246 A; infra, 913 D; Alcmaeon apud Gomperz I, 147; Diog. L. VIII. 83.
Cf. also perhaps Rep. 612 A; Phaedo 114 D.

642 BC Love Athens by defending it: So Arnold, God and the Bible , p. 1 27.
Cf. Stratton, Anger , p. 40, “But what one fights for he usually values, and
values more emotionally than before the fight.”

643 B Practice it from childhood. Cf. Rep. 374 C, and on 467 A (Loeb);
Delacroix, Psychologie de V art, p. 46.

644 A Does not deserve the name: Cf. Theaet. 176 CD; infra, 747 C, 819 A;
Rep. 519 A 2.

644 A Rightly educated become good. Cf. infra , 765 E-766 A; Rep. 416 C 1,
541 A; Euthyd. 282 B C.

644 D Estimate of better and worse: Cf. infra , 864 A; Phaedo 99 A; on
Phaedr. 237 DE.

644 DE A puppet , a plaything of God: Cf. infra, 804 B, 902 B, 906 A;
Crit. 109 B.

645 B Follow it in his life: Cf. on Laches 188 D; Gorg. 482 B 6, 488 A 7;
infra, 653 B 5, 689 A.

645 DE Intensifies temptations and relaxes inhibitions: “The effect of al¬
cohol is to lower the tonicity of the censors,” sagely observes a very modern
psychologist.

648 B Safe test: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1 1 19 a 26.

653 AC Right attitude toward pleasures and pains: Cf. 636 D, legislation
concerned with pleasure and pain. Cf. Tim. 69 D; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1172 a 22,
1105 a 4 ff.; Ruskin’s “Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.”
653 A In old age: Quoted Cic. De fin. V. 21.

653 B 4 When reason arrives: Cf. on Rep. 402 A (Loeb). So the Stoics.
653 B, 654 CD Dislike the right things: Cf. Ruskin’s “Taste is the only
morality.”

653 E No yoimg creature can be quiet: Cf. 672 C 4, 816 A; Ar. Pol. 1340
b 29: Cic. De fin. V. 20, “Ut conquiescere ne infantes quidem possint.” It is
a commonplace of modern psychology, repeated in various terms by Preyer,
Bain, etc. Cf. O’Shea, Dynamic Factors in Education , p. 81, “He is far more
helpless at birth than the chick or the calf or the colt or the kitten or the
puppy. Yet he is not static.”

654 BD What is right and beautiful: Cf. infra, 966; Hipp. Maj. 286 C ff.

6s6

WHAT PLATO SAID

654 E Associated with the good: Cf. Ale. 1 1 16 C; Symp. 201 C; Tim. 87 C,
88 C; Symp. 210 BD where it is implied in the transition from physical beauty
to the beauty in pursuits and in laws. Cf. Theaet. 185 E; Prot. 309 C.

655 D That which imitates our own character gives us pleasure: Cf. Gorg.
513 B C, 510 C, 481 C and perhaps Phaedr. 271 D 5-7.

655 E Necessarily: Cf. 658 E, 681 C, 687 C; Phaedr. 239 C, 271 B; and
on Rep. 473 E (Loeb). Cf. also on Euthyd. 306 A.

656 AB Assimilated to what he likes: Cf. 904 E on the punishment of the
wicked; Theaet. 176 E, 177 A. Cf. Rep. 395 CD, imitation becomes character.

657 B Stigmatizing it as “Victorian” : For apyolov cf. infra , 797 C D; Ep.
IV. 320 D; Ar. Pol. VII. 1330 b 33, \Lav apyaiois; Isoc. Nic. 26, Panegyr. 30,
Archid. 42. Cf. Aristoph. Clouds 929, Kpovos cov; Class. Phil., XXI (1926),
257-58.

658 D Young men and educated women: Cf. Faguet, 19th Century: “La¬
martine a ete infiniment aime des adolescents serieux et des femmes dis-
tingu£es.” This passage and Gorg. 502 D seem to indicate that women were
admitted to tragedies. For the statement that most people prefer tragedy
cf. Minos 321 A.

659 C Corrupts the pleasures of the audience: Cf. Class. Phil., XX (1925),
160.

659 CD To the rule of right reason: Cf. supra , 643, 653; Rep. 401 E ff.;
Ar. Eth. Nic. 1104 b 12.

Tones of virtue: For the relation of ethics and art in Plato cf. 655 AB,
812 C, 814 E; Rep. 399.

660E-661E Be affirmed and taught: Cf. Rep. 392 AB. Cf. 661 C with
Gorg. 472 E and 481 A, Rep. 591 C, Euthyd. 281 D.

662 B Sovereignty of ethics: Quoted with disapproval by Dean Inge. Cf.
infra , 904-5; Rep. 618 E; Unity , p. 25, nn. 160 and 161. Gomperz strangely
finds evidence of Plato’s own hesitations on this point in 663 B-E.

663 AB Divorce pleasure from righteousness: Cf. Cic. De off. III. 28, “Per-
vertunt hominis ea quae sunt fundamenta naturae, cum utilitatem ab hones-
tate sejungunt, omnes enim expetimus utilitatem ad eamque rapimur nec
facere aliter ullo modo possumus.” Cf. 733-34; Prot. 358 C. Similarly Joseph
Butler, “When we sit down in a cool hour, we cannot justify virtue or any
other pursuit till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness.”

663 C Is the more valid: Cf. supra , 658 E-659 A. Cf. Soph. 246 D 7, that
which is admitted by the better is better; Rep. 582; Ar. Rhet. 1398 b-1399 a.

663 E Would affirm it for the good of the young: Cf. Rep. 414 BC, 459 CD,
382 C, 389 B; Xen. Mem. IV. 2. 17. Cf. Aristotle’s protest {Eth. Nic. 1172 a
33). Cf. Biggs, Christian Platonists of Alexandria2, 87.

665 B Join in the chant: Is there a hint of senility in this complacency?
Cf. Shorey, Laws, p. 346. With air'K'qariau 665 C 6 cf. Isoc. Panath. 262.

666 A Add fire to fire: Cf. A nth. Pal., IX, 749, prj rvpi irvp eiraye; Seneca
De ira II. 20. 3, “Et ignem vetat igne incitari.” Cf. Ovid A. A. I. 244, “Ignis
in igne”; Heroid. 15 (16). 230; Chaucer, The Doctores Tale: “For wine and
youthe don Venus increse/ As men in fire wol casten oile and grese”; La

LAWS— NOTES 627

Rochefoucauld, 279, “La jeunesse est une ivresse continuelle; c’est la fievre de
la raison.”

666 E A camp , not of a city: Cf. Isoc. VI. 81 in praise. Why this sudden
attack on Sparta? But cf. 712 E.

667 A Follow where the argument leads: Cf. Theaet. 172 D. Cf. on Rep .
394 DE (Loeb); Unity , p. 5. Cf. the sensible remarks of Tayler Lewis, Plato
against the Atheists (New York, 1845), PP- 118-19.

669 B Induce the love of bad characters and moods . Cf. supra on 656 AB;
Rep. 401 A-C, 401 DE, 395 CD; infra, 802 CD.

669 DE Mere virtuosity and technique: Cf. Ar. Pol. VIII. 341 an. Cf.
Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh , “Much music/ As quite impossible in John¬
son^ day / As still it might be wished.”

671 D That fear of the Lord: Ar. Topics 126 a 6-9, objects that <Z>o/3os is
not the genus of alaxvvrj. Cf. Aristeae Ep. 189.

672 A God's gift of the vine: Cf. the liquor-dealers’ paper, March, 1918,
“Nothing more excellent than the juice of the grape was ever granted by God
to man.”

676 AB Infinite past time: Cf. infra , 782 A, 678 B; Rep . 499 C, Tim.
39 D i; Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution , p. 61. Cf. Herod. II. n-
14, 52; IV. 195; V. 9. Gomperz (III, 233) thinks Plato’s “horizon” has been
enlarged since the Republic . But cf. Theaet. 175 A. Augustine Civ. Z)e7 XII. xi
and xii contra.

677 A Truth in ancient legends: Cf. Polit. 268 E; Tim. 22 C 7; perhaps
Crit. 1 10 A 2.

677 A Periodic destruction: Cf. Polit. 270 C II; Tim. 22 C; Crit . 108 E;
Rep . 546 A; De Morgan, Prehistoric Man , p. 53.

677 B Tools and their uses would have perished: Cf. Shorey, Harvard
Studies , XII (1901), 208.

677 CD Discoveries today or in recent centuries: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1329 b 27,
everything discovered many times; Met. 1074 b 10; De caelo 270 b 19; Meteor.
339 b 27; and Wendell Phillips’ lecture on the lost arts. Cf. Shorey, loc. cit .;
Lucret. V. 326 ff.; and the lines in Raleigh’s Universal History:

If all this world had no original

But things have ever been as now they are,

Before the siege of Thebes or Troy’s last fall,

Why did not poets sing some elder war?

Cf. Diels Doxog. 581, 19.

678 A Their simple life: Cf. Polit. 272 A ff.; Rep. 372 C (Loeb); Introd.
to Loeb Rep. I, xiv. Cf. Zeller on Plato’s rejection of the simple life (p. 893).

678 E No contention for food: For 7repipdx7?ros cf. 715 A; Rep. 347 D,
521 A; Isoc. Areop. 24; Pa?iath. 145, 146. Cf. Lucret. V. 144, 999; Cic. De off.
II. 5; Wells, History , I, 172. Cf. Max Miihl, “Zu Plato und Dikaiarch,” Phil.
Woch ., XLIII, 430-31.

679 B God gave men: Cf. Polit. 274 C and, contra, Lucret. V. 1452-53.
Cf. Shorey on Xenoph., frag. 18, Class. Phil., VI (1911), 88: “There seems to
be no emphasis on deot and no rationalistic intention of opposing the gifts of

628

WHAT PLATO SAID

the gods to the independent search of men.” Cf. Arnold, God and the Bible ,
p. 117.

679 B Which do not require iron: Cf. Lucret. V. 1350,

Nexilis ante fuit vestis quam textile tegmen,

Textile post feminist, quia ferro tela paratur.

679 C Simple-mindedness: Cf. Phaedr. 275 B; Ruskin,/>tfjj/?fl; Rep. 348 C,
evijQeia.

679 C Quick to think evil: Cf. Rep. 409 C; Thucyd. 3. 82, inrovorjaas.

680 B By Homer to the Cyclopes: Od. XIV. 1 12 ff. Cf. Croce, Philosophy
o/G. Vico , p. 170, “Those customs which Vico thinking of the lonely Polyphe¬
mus in his cave called Cyclopean rules.” Sir Henry Maine and his followers
make much use of this passage. Cf. Bagehot, Works , IV, 435-36 ( Physics and
Politics I. ii).

680 C A charming poet: Cf. Charles Lamb’s insistence on feeling the
bumps of the gentlemen who opined that Shakespeare was quite a poet.

681 A Against the beasts: Cf. Theaet. 174 E; Polit. 274 B; Prot. 322 B;
Lucret. V. 969, 982-87.

681 BC Its own folkways and gods: A modern philosopher whose reading
of Plato apparently did not include this passage condescendingly observes:
“If Plato had been able to see that reflection and criticism express a conflict
of customs.”

681 C All unawares: He pretends accident. Cf. 682 E, 686 C, 702 B. Cf.
Tim. 26 E; Phaedr. 262 C, 265 C; Rep. 370 A, 521 D 4, 525 C.

682 E Tale — or fable: Plato would have been no less skeptical if he had
read the opinions of modern historians about the “return of the Heraclidae.”
Cf. his treatment of history in the Menexenus. Cf. Rep. 382 D (Loeb).

683 AB A historical basis: Cf. Tim. 26 E; Crit. 108 D.

683 E-684 A Verify in an actual case: Cf. 692 C; Herod. II. 28. Cf. Tim .
26 E, a true tale, not a myth.

683 E Dissolved only by themselves: Cf. on Rep. 545 D (Loeb), 465 B.

687 C In obedience to the bidding of our own souls: Cf. Spinoza, III, 31,
n. V, Prop. II n. Cf. the wistful sentence in the Menex. 247 D.

687 E Our will may conform to our reason: Cf. Gorg. 467 A, and perhaps
517 BC. On prayers cf. Ale. II, passim; Phaedr. 279 BC; infra , 709 D; Xen.
Mem. I. 31. 2; Xen. Symp. IV. 47. Cf. Ernst Bickel, “Platonisches Gebetle-
ben,” Archivf. Gesch. d. Philos., XXI (1908), 535—54.

688 B Argument returns upon itself: Cf. on Charm. 174 B.

688 C Shipwrecked on conduct: Arnold’s sentence aptly sums up Plato’s
meaning.

689 D Neither swi?n nor read: Cf. Theaet. 176 D; Epin. 988 E 7. Cf. Er¬
win Mehl, Antike Schwimmkunst (Munchen, 1927), pp. 42-43.

690 A Claims of rule: a^ux/iaTa. Cf. Ar. Pol. 1280 a 8 ff., 1282 b 26, 1283-
84.

690 A Claim of age: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1332 b 38.

690 C Fortunate and favored of heaven: Cf. Euthyd. 279 CD and Cic. De
imperio Gn. Pompei. XVI.

LAWS— NOTES 629

690 E The half is ?nore than the whole : Cf. Rep. 466 C; Otto, Sprichworter ,
p. 1 18.

691 B Wiser than we: Cf. Polyb. III. 2. 7.

691 C Better than the extreme everywhere: Cf. Commentators on Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1 106 b 8 and 36 with Plato Polit. 283-84. Cf. 679 B, 691 C, 701 E,
719 DE, 728 E. Cf. also 792 CD, 793 A, 733 E; Rep. 619 A, and perhaps
636 E 1.

691 CD Unlimited and irresponsible power: Cf. infra, 713 C, 875 B; Polit.
301 DE; Zeller, p. 972; Herod. III. 80. Henry Adams, from observation of
several presidents, and more recently Mr. Harry Emerson Fosdick have
preached from the text that “power is poison” ( Education of Henry Adams,
p. 418). Cf. also Ar. Pol. 1318 b 39-40.

691 E-692 A A mixed govemmerit: Cf. infra, 712 DE and 759 B; Ar. Pol.
1265 b 33, 1273 b 39, 1294 b 1, 1297 a 6; Zeller on Laws, p. 962; Tac. Ann .
IV. 33; Grote, IV, 319 and 310; H. Sidgwick, Development of European Polity,
pp. 128 ff. Cicero idealized the constitution of Rome as the typical mixed
government (Gaston Boissier, Ciceron, pp. 32-35). Cf. Polyb. III. 7, XI. 4;
Milton, Of Reformation in England, “There is no civil government .... not
the Spartan, not the Roman .... more wondrously and harmoniously tuned,
more equally balanced .... than is the commonwealth of England.”

693 A Hybridization: For avfnrecfiop’qpei'a cf. Phileb. 64 E 1.

693 C One and the same thing: Cf. 625 E, 630 C, 688 B, 693 B, 706 A,
7J7Ay 733 CD, 96 2 A; Rep. 484C, 500DE, 520C; Gorg. 503 E, 501 C, 517, 518.

693 D Two mother-types of polities: Cf. Polit. 291 f., 301 f.; Rep. 445 CD,
544. Cf. Shorey, Laws, pp. 349-50.

697 B First of goods: On the three kinds of goods cf. Laws 631 C, 661 AB,
717 C, 724 A, 726, 743 E. Cf. Euthyd. 279 B; Phileb. 48 E; Gorg. 467 E. Cf.
perhaps Eryx. 393 C. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1098 b 12; Pol. 1323 a 25. Cf. Novot¬
ny, Plato's Epistles, p. 177; Grote (IV, 428) says aliter in Epinomis. Cf. Xen.
Mem. I. v. 3-4, oIkov .... crco/xa ....

On 697 D cf. Class. Phil., XVII (1922), 86-87.

698 A Holding nothing in honor but wealth: Cf. Rep. 550 E-556, esp.
553 C-554 B. Cf. on Rep. I. 330 C (Loeb).

698 B Awe was their master: Cf. Isoc. Areopagit. 37 and 49; Aesch. Eu-
men. 690, 516 ff.; Herod. VII. 104; Lysias II. 25; Aristoph. Clouds 962, 995.

700 A Willing slave: Cf. Euthyd. 282 B; Phileb. 58 B i; Symp. 183 A,
184 C; Rep. 562 D.

701 C Titanic natures: For the idea that man descended from the Titans
is naturally wicked and rebellious, the Greek equivalent of original sin, cf.
Cic. De leg. III. 2. 5, “Noster vero Plato Titanum e genere statuit eos, qui ut
illi caelestibus, sic hi adversentur magistratibus.” Cf. Dio Orat. XXX (ed.
Dind., I, 333-34 ff.); Plutarch De esu cam. 995 C; M. Mayer, Die Giganten
und Titanen (Berlin, 1887), p. 239; Bacon, VI, 319: “That gigantine state of
mind which possesses the troublers of the world.” Cf. Lucret. V. 1 17 :

Ritu par esse gigantum
Penderc eos poenas.

630

WHAT PLATO SAID

701 CD Pull up the argument : For the self-check cf. Rep . 536 C; Laws
629 A, 686 C-E, 722 D, 803 BC, 857 B, 804 B, 832 B, 907 BC; Phaedr. 238 C,
260 D, 268 A, 269 B; Tim . 38 B, 48 C, 87 B. For the metaphor cf. Prot. 338 A.

704 C 2 Producing all things: tt apropos. Cf. Crit. no E. Cf. Ar. Pol. 1326
b 29, iroiVTofyopov , in the same connection.

705 A Salt and bitter neighborage of the sea: Cf. Herod. VII. 156, drjpov
elvcLL avvo'ucrifia axo-pirfoTarov. Ar. Pol. 1327 a 1 1 ff., discusses the whole topic,
moderating the extreme views of Plato. Cf. Meuten, Bodins Theorie , p. 26,
“So spricht Wimpheling in seiner Rerum germanicarum epitoma von ....
Deutschland als ‘longe a mari distans, quod Plato improbitatis magistrum
appellat.’ ” Cf. Milton’s “the fluxible fault .... of our watery situation”;
Cic. De Rep. II. 3. 5; II. 4. 7.

705 D The virtue of our citizens: Cf. 693 BC, 701 D, 770 D ff., 962 D,
963. Cf. Gorg. 504 DE, 517 -19, 513 E.

708 B Like bees from one centre: Cf. Pindar 01. VI. 99. Cf. 736 A. Cf.
Rabelais, III, 1 on colonies to relieve overpopulation. Cf. Puritan New Eng¬
land as contrasted with California or South Africa. Cf. Wordsworth, The
Excursion , IX, 376,

The will, the instincts and appointed needs

Of Britain do invite her to cast off

Her swarms and in succession send them forth, etc.

709 A Chance rules all: Cf. Herod. VII. 49; Julian Letter to Themistius
257 D; Shorey on tvxv in Polybius , Class. Phil., XVI (1921), 280-83; Shorey,
Laws , p. 352.

709 D For the exercise of his art: Cf. Shorey, Lawsy p. 353. Cf. Ar. Pol.
1265 a 17, ‘‘Pray, yes, but not for impossibilities.”

710 C As counselor a true legislator: Cf. Polit. 259 AB, the counselor of a
king is himself a king. Cf. the Stoics and Ruskin.

712 B The molduig: t\cltt€lv. Cf. 746 A, 800 B; Rep. 374 A, 420 C, 4 66 A,
500 D, 588 C, etc.

712 E Not polities but factions: Cf. 715 B, 832 C. Cf. Ar. Pol. 1278 a 30
ff.; The Federalist X and LI in fine, “factious majorities.” Cf. Rep. 422 E-
423 B, 521 AB and Loeb on 423 AB.

712 E Mixed governments: Cf. on 691 E. For the point that it is impossi¬
ble to name a well-mixed government (712 E 5 and 8) cf. Ar. Pol. 1294 b 15-
16; Polyb. VI. xi. 4.

713 C Endure autocratic power: Cf. supra on 691 CD.

714 A Apportioyvnent of reason: Cf. Polit. 300 C, 297 B; Laws 645 B, 890
D, 957 C. Cf. on Rep. 338 D (Loeb); Shorey, Laws , p. 356. Cf. on Minos 313
and 314. Cf. Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord , “Government; where only a sov¬
ereign reason .... should dictate, etc.”

713 E Practicable imitation: This wilful generalization of the word is
characteristic of Plato. The meaning is perfectly clear from Polit. 293 C ff.,
297 C, 300 C, 301 A. Cf. 713 B. Cf. also the general thought of Rep. 590 CD.

714 C Chief of those claims to rule of which we spoke: 690 A ff. For the
idea of “might is right” cf. 890 A; Rep. 338 C, 367 C; Gorg. 483, 484, 489.

LAWS— NOTES 631

715 B Only be factions: Cf. supra on 712 E. With the whole passage cf.
Ar. Pol. 1279 a 17-18.

716 A Walks humbly in their train: To follow God is the end. Cf. on
Theaet. 176 B; Laws 906 B; Rep. 613 B, 501 B, 589 D(P); Havet, Le Christi-
anisme et ses origin es, I, 234.

716 A But he who exalts himself: For the biblical style cf. Soph. O.T. 883;
Laws 947 E 7; Diels, frag, orphic. B 6.

716 C God is the measure of all things: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa , I,
xiv, 12, “Scientia Dei est mensura rerum.” Cf. Pohlman, II, 297 on the danger
of this principle. Cf. Theaet. 152 A. Cf. Meifort, Der Platonismus des Clemens
Alex., p. 67, to Kara 6eov a\r}0Lvdv xai oikcuov pkrpov u> peTpeirac ra perpov-
peva.

716 E-717 A By the wicked is labor lost: Cf. infra , p. 643; Cic. De leg. II.

xvi. 41. ... .

717 C Heaviest penalties: For the antithesis cf. infra , 935 A 2. For the
importance of words cf. Eurip. Androm. 642 ff.; N.T., James 3:5-6.

718 CD Receive more favorably what follows: Cf. 723 A, 730 B. This is the
first suggestion of proemiums to the Laws though Plato does not yet use the
word. Cf. Shorey, Laws , pp. 366-69. Cf. 722 DE, 723 AB and E, 854 A,
870 D, 720 DE, 772 E, 932 A. Cf. Rep. 531 D, 532 D; Cic. De leg. II. 6;
Posidonius apud Seneca Ep. 94. 38 contra.

718 E Steep path of virtue: Hesiod W orks and Days 287 ff. Cf. Rep. 364
CD; Prot. 340 D.

719 C Often contradicts himself: Apelt (p. 128) thinks this proves Plato
was not the first to speak of the unconscious inspiration of the poet. Cf.
Phaedr. 245 A; Apol. 22 C; Ion 534. Wil. (II, 331) says, “Kein Gedanke mehr
an die Berechtigung der theia mania.” He forgets 682 A, which he cites I,
477. Cf. 719 C and Cic. De offic. I. 28.

719 D Always one and the same: Cf. Gorg. 490 E; Tim. 40 A; Symp. 221
E 5. Cf. Thucyd. I. 22. 2 and III. 56. 7; Isoc. 8. 52; 2. 18; 13. 12, where Teich-
miiller fancifully sees an allusion to Plato. H. Gomperz, “Isokrates und die
Sokratik,” Wiener Studien , XXVII (1905), 181, compares Isoc. 2. 18, “was
jedenfalls auffallend an Xenophon Mem. IV. iv. 6 und Plato Gorg. p. 490 E
erinnert.”

719 E Ask him to define it: Cf. 636 E 1, 638 C 7.

721 AB Thirty and thirty-jive: Alleged contradiction of infra , 772 DE.

721 BC Desire for immortality: Cf. on Symp. 206 E.

722 E-723 A Which is the command: Cf. Austin’s once famous definition:
“Law is the command of a political superior to a political inferior,” antici¬
pated by Hobbes, Leviathan , chap, xv, “Law properly is the word of him that
by right hath command over others.”

727 A Honor their own souls: Cf. Ale. I no B. Cf. Eurip. Cyclops 340.

727 D Fear death without reason: Cf. infra , 828 D, 881 A; Rep. 386 B, 486
B; Gorg . 522 E; Phaedo 77 E; Crito 43 B; Apol. 35 A 5-7, 40 C.

727 D Or life or beauty: This sentence has been used in argument against
the commonplace that Greek religion is a religion of beauty only.

632

WHAT PLATO SAID

728 DE Even health : Cf. 631 C and on Rep. 591 C (Loeb).

728 A Against virtue: Cf. Juvenal III. 54-55, “Tanti tibi non sit opaci/
Omnis arena Tagi.”

728 C Than to evade the penalties of wrong: Cf. Gorg. 472 E. Cf. Plut. De
sera numinis vindicta 554 A. Cf. infra , 860 A, 905 B 4-5, and on Prot. 324 AB.

728 E The mean is better: Cf. supra on 691 C.

729 B A better inheritance than much gold: Cf. Isoc. II. 32, III. 58, IV. 77,
and Democ., frag. 208 (Diels, p. 185). Cf. Webster’s “Leave him a stock of
virtue.”

729 B Reverencing the child ourselves: Cf. Juv. Sat. XIV. 47, “Maxima
debetur pueris reverentia.”

729 C Example that is effective: Cf. on Soph. 230 A; Isoc. III. 57; Democ.,
frag. 208.

729 D Servants of the laws: Cf. supra , 700 A, 715 D; cf. also Polit. 297 E,
300 A-C, 301 A.

730 C Truth is the leader of all goods: Cf. Rep. 389 B, 382 A, 485 CD;
Laws 861 D; Cratyl. 428 D. Cf. also on Soph. 228 C 7.

730 C Is the fool: This clears up for those who need it the fallacies of the
Hippias Minor (cf. supra , pp. 87, 90) and the apparent ambiguity of the Re¬
public , 382 A, 389 B, 485 CD.

730 C The faithless man: The Christian fathers and Philo and Ficino
found religious “faith” in this and similar passages. Cf. 630 AB. Cf. Anon.
Iambi., frag. 7 (Diels). Cf. Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism , pp. 58-63;
Meifort, Der Platonismus des Clemens Alexandrinus , p. 18; Alanus de Insulis
apud Baumgartner, “Fides utique super opinionem, sed infra scientiam.”

Seebohm ( Oxford Reformers , pp. 6-7) quotes Ficino: “Faith (as Aristotle
has it) is the foundation of knowledge. By faith alone (as the Platonists
prove) we ascend to God.”

730 D Checks the injustice of others: Cf. Mrs. Browning, A Court Lady ,
xx:

Happy are all free peoples too strong to be dispossest,

But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest.

731 B Righteous indignation: Cf. Rep. 440 B f., 410-11, 375 BC. This
doctrine always divided Stoics from Platonists. Cf. Bacon, Essays , VII, “To
seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.” So Hazlitt:
“Virtue .... cannot be divested entirely of the blindness and impetuosity
of passion.” Cf. Mackintosh, Diss.; Stratton, On Angery passim. Cf. on Rep.
439 E (Loeb).

73i L> Womanish waspishness: For similar slighting expressions about
women cf. 790 A 6, 935 A 1, 949 B 3; Rep. 469 D 7, ibid. 549 E, 557 C 8; Laws
694 E, 639 B 1 1 . They represent a slight “disharmony” between Plato’s philo¬
sophic opinions and his instincts of an Athenian old bachelor. Cf. Rep. 454
and infra on 781 A.

731 E Love is blind: This saying of Plato is often used by later writers.
Cf. Plut. De discr. adul. et am.y p. 48 E (with Wyttenbach’s note); De capiend .

LAWS— NOTES 633

ex inim. uti!.y pp. 90 A and 92 E; Platon. quaest., p. 1000 A, etc. Cf. Stall-
baum, ad loc .; Leutsch-Schneidewin, II, 777, No. 30.

732 C Abstain from violent laughter: Cf. on Rep. 388 E (Loeb). Cf. Rep.
606 C; Laws 935 AB ff.

732 CD Hopeful in adversity: Cf. 792-93. Cf. Horace Od. II. 3. 1, “Ae-
quam memento.”

733 The most pleasurable in the end: Cf. 663 CD. Arnold ( God and the
Bible , p. 141) quotes St. Augustine, “Act we must in pursuance of that which
gives most delight.”

734 BC Balance of pleasure: Lao Tze has been quoted as saying, “The
sage delights in that which is insipid. ”(?) Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1152 b 15, t6
akvirov.

735 B Purges his material: Cf. Rep. 429 DE; Polit. 279-83, 309-10; Aris-
toph. Lys. 574 ff.; Ar. Pol. 1326 a 4.

735 B 7 Purges his flock: a.'KO'irkpspei. Cf. Rep. 541 A 1 and with avrjvvros
(B 9) and TrpocraToWvcriv (C 1) cf. Gorg. 507 E 3 and 518 C 7.

735 C According to his opportunities: Cf. 739 A, 709 E; Rep. 501 A. On
ap&s ye 7rcos, 736 A, cf. Shorey, Laws , p. 346 , n. 7.

736 E But the increase of appetite: Cf. Rep. 521 A, 578 A, 579 B 5; infra,
832 A; Democ., frag. 284; Ar. Pol. 1277 a 25, ’laacxiv e<j>T] ireivrjv ore /jlti rvpav-
voi.

737 D For concreteness: axvpiCLTOs evena, for the sake of an outline.

738 B Sanctities of tradition: For Plato's religious conservatism cf. 759 B;
cf. Epin. 985 C. Cf. for his deference to Delphi, on 759 C.

739 C Exists or ever shall exist: Cf. on Rep. 472 B-E; Rep. 499 C; infra ,
746 A-C.

739 CD Perfect unity: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1261 a 9 ff., 1263 b 39 contra.

739 D Gods or sons of gods: Cf. 740 A 1-2. Cf. Shorey, Laws , p. 351.

739 E Second best: Cf. 807 B; Polit. 300 C, devrepos ttXovs, and 297 E.
Cf. infra , 875 D. Cf. on Phaedo 99 C. Cf. Barker, p. 319.

739 E Yet finish a third: This recalls the plans of the old age of Grote,
Jowett, Gladstone, and many others. For the feeling of patriotism in 740 A
cf. Rep. 41 4 E; Menex. 239-40.

740 B Shall not be changed: Cf. infra , 855 A, 856 DE, 877 D-878 B, 923
CD ff., 929 A.

740 E Sending out of colonies: Cf. infra , 923 CD, 925 BC; supra , 736 A.
Cf. also 708 B-D.

741 A With necessity even a god cannot contend: Cf. infra , 818 AB; Prot.
345 D; Otto, Sprichworter , p. 240.

741 C Cypressial memorials: Longinus IV. 6 condemns this as an ill
phrase. For records cf. 745 A, 754 DE, 785 A, 850 AB, 855 B, 914 C, 955 D.

741 E-742 A Possess gold or silver: Cf. Rep. 416 E; infra , 743 D, 746 A.

742 C No loans at interest: Cf. Rep. 556 AB. Cf. infra , 921 D. Cf. Deut.
23:20; Lev. 25:36 (Renan Hist, du peuple d'Isr ., Ill, 227, 429-30). Cf. Hast¬
ings, Encyc ., s.v. “Usury.”

WHAT PLATO SAID

634

742 DE Wealth .... and virtue are inco?npatihle aims: Cf. Rep. 550 E;
supra , 727 E-728 A, 831 C.

742 E Not attempt impossibilities: Cf. Rep. 360 E-361 A (Loeb). Cf. Ar.
Eth. Nic. mi b 22 aliter. Cf. James, Psychology , II, 560: “I will that the
distant table slide over the floor towards me; it also does not.”

743 AC Never very rich: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1120 b 13 ff.

743 D For the sake of which wealth is sought: Cf. Juv. VIII. 84, “Et prop¬
ter vitam.”

744 BC Proportionate equality: Cf. infra , 757 BC; Gorg. 508 AB; Rep. 558
C; infra , 848 B: Isoc. Areop . 21, Nic . 1 4— 15: Archytas (Diels) 273; Ar. Pol.
1301 b 29, Eth. Nic. 1 13 1 b 27. Cf. Symmachus I. 1, “nam praeter aequum
ccnset, qui inter disparis obsequium par requirit”; Cic. Rep. I. 34, “ipsa ae-
quitas iniquissima est.”

745 E One near and one far: Ar. Pol. 1330 a 15 adopts this; but 1265 b
he objects.

746 C Then submit it to judgment: Cf. 799 E, 805 B, 812 A, 820 E, 768 D,
842 A. So Romain Rolland repeatedly in Jean Christophe and in Annette et
Sylvie.

747 BC Huckstering spirit of Phoenicians and Egyptians: Cf. Rep. 525 CD.
For the value of the study of mathematics in rousing sluggish minds cf. Rep.
526 B. Cf. also Epin. 976 DE, 977 E.

747 E Divinely favored: For de La eiriirvoLa cf. Rep. 499 C 1. No supersti¬
tion. Just conservatism and recognition of the incalculable. Cf. 738 D.

752 A Excuses will not serve: ayoova it po^curas was proverbial. Cf. CratyL
421 D. Cf. Schol., p. 236, Pearson on Heracleidae 722.

752 A Our fable: Cf. 632 E, 8Lap.vQo\oyovvTes. Cf. 841 C, 812 A, 712 A;
Phaedr. 276 E; Rep. 376 D 9.

752 A To wander headless: Cf. Gorg. 505 D; Phaedr. 264 C; Phileb. 66 D;
Tim. 69 B 1.

752 D In no perfunctory manner: Cf. on Phaedo 60 E, 61 AB.

753 B Election of this board: Cf. infra, 755-56; Barker, pp. 333-34. Cf.
Milton, A Free Commonwealth , Carisbrooke Library, pp. 434-35.

753 E More than half, proverbially: This is a favorite order of words in
Plato's later style. (Naber, England, and Bury bracket ev tolls 7rapot/uats !)
For the thought cf. 788 D, 765 E; Ar. Pol. 1304 b 29.

757 E Of the lot: On the lot cf. Rep. 557 A 5, 460 A, 461 E; infra, 759 B flf.
For TrapwvvfjiLOL(n (757 D 7) cf. on Phaedo 78 E. For avayKaiors (757 E 7) cf.
Rep. 527 A; Ar. Pol. 1332 a 13, /cat to /caXcos avay/taius exovatv.

758 A Like a ship at sea: For the figure cf. on Euthyd. 291 D; Milton, A
Free Commonwealth, “The grand or general council .... should be perpetual.
.... The ship of the commonwealth is always under sail.”

759 B Partly by lot: Cf. 757 E. Isoc. Areopag. 23 thinks the lot undemo¬
cratic, but cf. Ar. Rhet. 1365 b, Democracy is a form of government under
which the magistracies are assigned by lot; also Rep. 557 A.

759 C Delphi is to be consulted: For deference to the Delphic oracle cf.
738 BC, 828 A, 856 E, 865 B, 914 A, Rep. 427 B, 461 E, 540 BC.

LAWS— NOTES

635

759 D Board of interpreters: Exegetes. Cf. Euthyph. 4 C 8 and on Rep.
427 C (Loeb). Cf. Ehrmann, De juris sacri interpretibus Atticis (Diss., 1908).

761-62 As a band of Boy Scouts: Cf. Ar. Pol. VII. 8. 1322 a 28. Cf. A.
Dumont, Essai surl'ephebie attique (Paris, 1876); W. Dittenberger, De ephebis
atticis (Gott., 1863); Girard in Daremberg-Saglio, II, 621-36; Thalheim in
Pauly-Wissowa, V, 2737 ff.; Alice Brenot, Recherches sur V ephebie attique et en
particulier sur la date de V institution (Paris, 1920).

For 761 A 3 cf. Ar. Pol. 1330 b 2-3, 1330 b 26.

761 E Judicial functions: Cf. infra, 764 BC, 767 A. Cf. Book IX for the
discussion of judicial procedure.

762 E-763 A Rule and be ruled: Cf. Xen. Mem. II. i. 12; Cyropaedia/>tfj-
sim. Cf. infra, 942 C; Prot. 326 D 7; Ar. Pol. 1277 b 12, 1333 a 2, 13.

765 E The first shoot . ... is ynost decisive: Cf. infra , 788 D; cf. 753 E;
Rep. 377 AB.

766 A The most savage creature: Cf. Theaet. 174 D; Polit. 292 D 4, Rep.
590; infra , 875 A, 808 D; Isoc. Areop. 43. Cf. Cebes ( Tabula 33) loosely quot¬
ed. Cf. Aristoph. Lysistr . 1014 of woman. Cf. also Phaedr. 246 B 4; Zeller,
Ar. (Eng.), II, 206.

766 D Judges or jurymen ought to have more to say: Cf. infra , 876 B, on
voiceless courts. Cf. Grote, IV, 341. Emphatic utterances to the effect that
the judge should rule the court could be quoted from President Taft, the Chi¬
cago Crime Commission, Judge Kavanagh, R. W. Child, and A. S. Osborn,
The Problem of Proof , pp. 303-5.

768 B Does not feel himself a citizen: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1275 a 22, 1283 b 42.

767-68 Public and private suits: Cf. my note in Class. Phil., XIX (1924),

279-80.

769 A Old men's game: Cf. 6 85 A, 712 B; Phaedr. 276 E.

769 D, 770 BC Omits details: Cf. 772 AB, 779 D, 785 A, 788 AB, 807 E,
828 B, 842 CD, 846 C, 855 D, 876 DE, 957 A, 968 C. Cf. Rep. 412 B, 400 BC,
403 DE, 379 A, 426 A-E.

772 D Only by general consent: The difficulty of amending the U.S. or
the Illinois Constitution is a plausible parallel.

770 A At the sunset of life: Cf. Emped. apud Ar. Poet. 1457 b 25; Alexis,
frag. 228 (Kock); Aelian 298; Sext. Empir. (Bekker) 41 1; Longinus 9. 13;
Anth. Pal., XII, 178, 4.

771 And the worship of the gods: No superstition, as Zeller mistakenly
thinks. Cf. on Crito 44 B.

773 B That which benefits the state: Cf. Rep. 458 E ff. Cf. Lucan, II, 388,
“urbi pater est, urbique maritus.”

773 AB But with their opposites: Cf. Polit. 310. It is alleged that this idea
is omitted in the Republic. Cf. Shorey, Laws , p. 349, nn. 5-8. Cf. infra , 930 A.

773 D By another temperate deity: The style of this sentence was censured
by later critics.

775 E Is (as) God: Not superstition, but unction. Cf. Pindar, frag. 1080.
Wilamowitz (II, 394) and Murray (Four Stages) omit the Kal and make a
literal god of apxh- Rut, even so, cf. on Philcb. 22 C.

WHAT PLATO SAID

636

776 B The torch of life: Cf. on Rep. 328 A (Loeb). Cf. my paper on Lu-
cret. II.79 in Harvard Studies , XII (1901), 204, “Et quasi cursores vitai
lampada tradunt.”

776 CD Penestae and other instances: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1269 a 36, 1259 b 22.

777 CD Of different races: Cf. Ar. Pol. i33oa2 6. Cf. Hart, Science of
Social Relations , p. 546, “On that day the manager was hiring Swedes. The
week before he had been hiring Poles, and before that he had taken on Ital¬
ians. It was a good idea, he said, to get them mixed up.”

777 E Only in commands: Cf. Rousseau, Emile , “Ne raisonnez point avec
les nourrices.” Ar. Pol. 1260 b 5 objects.

778 D To sleep in the earth: Ar. Pol. 1330 b 33 says this is very old-fash¬
ioned, and is refuted by what happened to those who made this boast. Cf.
Epict., frag. 45. For “sleep” cf. Phaedr. 267 A 6.

780 C Carding of wool into the fire: Cf. Lucret. IV. 376, “quasi in ignem
lana trahatur.”

781 A Stealthy and secretive race of women: Cf. on 731 D. Cf. 694 E,
937 AB, Rep. 557 C; Symp. 176 E 7-8.

781 B Half the state: Cf. 805 A, 806 C. So Ar. Pol. 1260819; Rhet.
1361 a.

781 DE We have leisure: Cf. infra , 858 B, 887 B; Theaet. i^jo. CD, 187 D.

782 A Endless changes that have taken place: Cf. supra , 676 A ff.; Tim .

77 AB.

782 E Three needs or appetites: Cf. Arnold, Lit . and Dogma , p. 15, “M.
Littre, in a most ingenious essay on the origin of morals, traces up, better
perhaps than any one else, all our impulses into two elementary instincts,
the instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive instinct.” Cf. ibid., p.
175; also God and the Bible, p. 126.

783 A Morbid appetites: Cf. the Stoics, TraOrj.

788 CD Contended: Cf. 776 C 8; Thucyd. II. 54. 3-

789 B The birds that they carry under their arms: Cf. Aristoph. Lys. 985;
Plut. Ale. XI; and the old Chinese gentlemen who take their bullfinch out for
exercise in its cage. Cf. Gorg. 469 D for the expression.

789 D 1 Which do not fatigue: aKoira, technical. Cf. Phaedr . 227 A 6; Tim.
89 A 8.

789 D 6 To master: KaraKparodvra , medical term.

790 A Expose ourselves to laughter: Cf. 778 E, 800 B; Rep. 506 D, and
perhaps 450 E-451 A, 536 B.

790 A The nurses: Plato assumes more than one, pi] piav. Cf. Symp. 184
B 5; Tim. 36 D 1. For the phrasing of 790 A 6 cf. Ep. VII. 334 D 2.

790 C An elementary principle: otoix&qv. Cf. Isoc. II. 16; Ep. VI. 8; Ar.
Met. 1059 b 23; Soph. El. 172821; Xen. Mem. II. i. i; Ar. Pol. V. ix. 5,
1309 b 16.

790 DE Lull sleepless children to rest: cf. Ar Pol. 1342 b 4.

790-91 Reduces and calms: Cf. Ar. Poet. 1449827. Cf. Tun. 88-89;
Symp. 189 A (sneeze). This passage is perhaps a source of Aristotle’s doc¬
trine of KaOapcns.

792 AB Subjecting young souls to fears: Cf. Theaet. 173 A. So Rousseau.

LAWS— NOTES

637

792 A Peevishness: So Schopenhauer.

792 A Weepings and clamors: Ar. Pol. 1336 a 35 and an eminent modern
psychologist say it is good exercise for the body.

792 E 2 To “ condition ” them to cheerfulness: rjOos 5ia Wos. Cf. on Rep.
395 D (Loeb). England refers to Rep. 377 B. Cf. Ar. Pol. 1287 b 5.

792 D Cannot escape pain: Cf. on Phaedo 60 B for the idea that pleasure
and pain are close companions; Rep. 583 C ff.; Tim. 69 D 1, 64 A 3.

792 D Attribute to the gods: Cf. Phileb. 33 BC; Epin. 985 A; Rep. 389 A;
Lucret. II. 646, “Omnis enim per se divom natura, etc.”

793 A Unwritten law: Cf. Hirzel, aypcufros vopos, Abh. Sachs. Gesell. Hist.
Klass.y XX, 43 ff. Antig. 454; O.T. 865 ff; Xen. Mem. IV. iv. 19; Thucyd. II.
37; Ar. Pol. 3. 16=1287 b 6; Rhet. I. 13. 1373 b 1 ff.; Diog. L. III. 86. Cf.
Stallbaum, ad loc. Cf. E. M. Cope, An Introduction to Aristotle's “Rhetoric”
pp. 239 ff.; Emped. (Diels1) 222-23; Friedlander, I, 137.

793 C Superstructure will topple down: Cf. Lucret. IV. 513; Hobbes, Le¬
viathan , chap, xxvi, “And where men build on false grounds the more they
build the greater is the ruin”; Shorey, Harvard Studies , XII (1901), 207.

795 BC One-sided education: Cf. Class. Phil ., XI, 213. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic.
1 134 b 34; Pol. VII. 1327 b 35 novoKoSkov. Cf. Skinner, Readings in Education¬
al Psychology , p. 260. A Chicago paper, September, 1930, reports that the
French government is trying to persuade the people to train children to use
the left hand as well as the right and says that it is no new idea as Benjamin
Franklin had it.

795 D Music for the soul: Cf. 673 A. There is no contradiction between
this and Rep. 416, nor is there between Rep. 376 E, 521 E, and 410 C.

795-q6 Conclude: Provisionally — it seems to be taken up again infra ,
804 C, 813 ABff., 832-33.

797 D Change — except of evil things: Cf. Rep. 380 E, Polit. 270 C 7. 816 E
is irrelevant.

799 CD Crossways of thought: An apparent anticipation of some modern
psychologies.

799 E Laws or “ nomoi ”: Cf. supray 700 B, 722 DE, 734 E; Rep. 531 D.
Cf. irapavopLa, 700 D, 701 A; Rep 424 D.

800 A Divination of the truth: Cf. on 816 B, 960 C, and perhaps on Polit.
268 E, and infra on 957 AB.

800 B Typical examples: For eK/iayeiov cf. Theaet. 194 D, 196 A, 1 9 1 C;
Tun. 50 C, 72 C. Cf. Rep. 379 A ff. on three canons of theology.

802 CD We like what we are accustomed to: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1179 b 35;
Rhet. 1369 b 18-19. So Rousseau, Emile I. Cf. “Optimum elige, suave et fa¬
cile illud faciet consuetudo.” So Bacon, Of Parents and Children , in fine, trans¬
lating Plutarch De exilio , c. 8, p. 602 C.

Cf. De tuenda sanit. praecepta 3, p. 123 C; De tranquillitate animi 4, pp.
4 66 f.; Stobaeus also attributes this saying to Pythagoras. Cf. I. 29 (Meineke,
I, p. 11, 23); XXIX, 99 (Meineke, II, p. 21, 11); cf. Apostolius VII. 9 e
{JParoemiogyaphi Graeci, ed. Leutsch, II, 397, 24); Gataker on Marcus Aure¬
lius III. 6, p. 79.

For the idea cf. Epict., frag. 144 (Schweighauser).

638

WHAT PLATO SAID

802 D So much clear gain: Often mistranslated.

803 AB The voyage of life: Cf. Phaedo 85 CD; Ale. II 146 E. For rpoTri-
8eia (B 1) cf. the pun in Aristoph. Wasps 30.

803 B Worth taking seriously: Cf. Rep . 604 BC, 519 D 6; Caird, Evolution
of Theology in Greek Philos ., p. 160. Bruns ( Platos Gesetze ) says Laws 803 A-
804 B is due to the pessimism of the editor Philippus. But cf. Shorey, Laws ,

P* 353, n. 3.

803 DE Dance our way through life: Cf. Epin. 980 BC. Cf. Sir William
Temple: “Now when all is done, human life is at the greatest and best but
like a froward child that must be played with and humoured a little to keep
it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.” Cf. Havelock Ellis,
The Dance of Life, passim. Is this passage perhaps the suggestion for it?

For the feeling of this entire page in connection with 817 B, 700 A, 653 AB,
664-65, 667, 716, 644 D, 797, 729, 959, 829 D, 904-5, cf. G. M. Sargeaunt,
“An Aspect of Education in Plato’s Laws,” Class. Studies , 1929, pp. 129-63.

803 DE For the sake of peace: Cf. 628 DE. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1 176 b 28 ff.
contra.

806 A-C The Spartan compromise: Cf. 637 BC for Spartan women. Cf.
Ar. Pol . 1269 b 3. Women were useless at the Theban invasion. Cf. Xen.
Hell. VI. v. 28; Plut. Ages . 31.

807 A In idleness like beasts: Cf. Polit. 272 C; Rep. 420 E, 372 CD, Ar.
Pol. 1334 a 21-22.

807 AB A prey to hardier beasts: Cf. Menex. 246 E 4; Rep. 422 D 6; Ba¬
con, Essays, xxi, “All this is but sheep in a lion’s skin except the breed and
disposition of the people be stout and warlike.”

808 B All that health requires: Cf. II. II. 24; Od. XV. 394. So Schopen¬
hauer when an old man!

808 DE Much discipline to curb it: Cf. Meno 89 B; Theaet. 174 D 6 of
man in general.

809 C Arithmetic: Cf. supra, 747 B; infra, 819 AC; Rep. VII. 522 C ff.

810 BC Prose literature and of verse not set to music: Cf. Isoc. II. 7 on
poetry and prose; infra, 957 CD.

81 1 B Polymathy: Cf. infra, 819 A 5; Phaedr. 275 A 7; Prot. on educa¬
tion, 325 D ff., infra, pp. 656 and 663.

812 DE Between the music and the feelings: There is no contradiction with
816 D 9, as some suppose, nor with Rep. 524 D 3.

813 D Everything depends on education: Cf. supra, 641 B, 644 AB; Rep.
416 BC, 423 E, 541 A.

816 B Very apt and happy: Cf. supra on 800 A; infra , 960 C. With 816
B 5 cf. Aesch. Ag. 681.

816 DE Knowledge of opposites is one: Cf. on Ion 532 A. There is no con¬
tradiction with 812 E.

817 A Fetch and carry: Cf. Phaedr. 279 C 2. Cf. the pun on the beggar
Iros in the Od. XVIII. 73. Cf. Pope, Satires, “To fetch and carry sing-song
up and down” (I, 220); and Sandy s Ghost, “To fetch and carry in his mouth
the works of all the Muses.” Cf. “Her name was Carrie and the boys called
her Tetch-and-carry.’ ” For the idiom cf. also 884 A 3.

LAWS— NOTES

639

817 B Composers of a nobler tragedy: Cf. Milton’s “He who would ....
write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.”

818 AB Necessary: Cf. Epin. 982 B 5. Cf. Emerson’s scorn for the old
who “accept the actual for the necessary” {Circles).

818 C 2 Take charge of men: A hint of the higher education.

818E-819 A In more sophisticated communities: Cf. Mill, I, 120.

819 A-C Egyptian children learn: Lowie, Are We Civilized? p. 267: “As
Whitehead has said, ‘Probably nothing in the modern world would have
more astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that, under the influ¬
ence of compulsory education, the whole population of Western Europe, from
the highest to the lowest, could perform the operation of division for the
largest numbers.’ ”

820 A Incommensurable with one another: Cf. Theaet . 148 B; Parmen.
140 BC. For Plato and mathematics cf. supra , p. 501.

820 B Big things not to know: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1338 a 9; Quintil. I. I. 21; Max.
Tyr. VII. 8. Cf. 818 A.

820 D 10 Adopt them: eyfcpivodpev. Cf. infra, 936 A, 952 A, 946 B, 755 D,
802 B; Rep. 486 D, 377 C, 413 D, 537 A.

821 A Actually impious: Not Plato’s view as Montaigne {Raimond Sebond)

and many others interpret. Cf. Erich Frank {Plato u. die - Pythag.y p. 201 ).

Cf. Epin. 988 A; Xen. Mem. IV. 7. 6 contra. Cf. the misapprehension of
the Epicurean in Cic. De nat. deor. I. 12. Cf. Lucan X. 195-200.

For oi'8 ’ ocriov cf. 891 A, 898 C; Rep. 368 B, 391 A, 416 E; Tim. 29 A;
Epin. 986 B 7, ov8l Oepis ehreiv.

821 CD Wander in their course: No superstition on sun and moon. Unc¬
tion only. Cf. Cic. De div. I. 11; De nat. deor. II. 20, “Falso vocantur er-
rantes”; Tusc. I. 25, “Ilia non re sed vocabulo errantia.” Cf. also 899 B.

822 AB The quickest the slowest: Cf. Rep. 617 AB: Epin. 985-87; Tim.
39 Aff.

822 D ff. Hunting: Cf. Xen. on hunting. For 823 B, avOpaxruv .... Orjpav ,
cf. Xen. Mem. II. 6. 29. Cf. Soph. 231 D 3.

822 D ff. Rather exhortations than positive laws: Cf. the idea of the proem,
788 A, 793, etc.

829 A The good life like a single man: Cf. Milton, Of Ref. in England ,
Book II, “A commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage,
one mighty growth and stature of an honest man.” For the distinction be¬
tween £r)v and ev £rjvy cf. on Rep. 369 D (Loeb) and Crito 48 B. Cf. Ar. Pol.
VII. 1326 b 28.

830 C For war in peace: Cf. 803 D, 814 D. For crKLapaxeiv (C 3) cf. Apol.
18 D6.

829 DE Not made them poetical: Cf. 656 C. For other “boutades” cf.
742 C, 769 B, 886 BC, 908-9, 929 D, 937-38, 919 AB, 704 D ff., 881 A, 952 D,
81 1 B, 819 A. Cf. Phaedr. 275 B.

831 C ff. In the “Republic"*. Cf. Rep. 550 D ff., 373 D, 434 B, 591 D. Cf.
infra , 870 BC.

832 C But the rule of factions: Cf. supra , 712 E, 715 B. For ob iroiXiTeias,
832 B 10, cf. Ar. Pol. 1292 a 31.

640

WHAT PLATO SAID

832 E For the real contests of war: Cf. 813 DE, 829-30, 942 D. Cf. on Rep.
404 B.

835 C Mightiest of human appetites: Cf. 839 B. Cf. Shakes., Measure for
Measure , II, I: “Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth in
the city?”

836 ff. Modern Christian conscience: Cf. my review of John Jay Chapman,
Plato and Lucian , Saturday Rev. of Literature, August 1, 1931, p. 24.

838 BC V erbal taboos: Cf. Arnold, God and the Bible , p. 133; McDougal in
Sex and Civilization , pp. 82-83, 93 ff-

Of the dra?natic dialogues: Cf. Unity , pp. 19 f.

844 A Water supply: Cf. supra , 779 C; Rabelais, III, 5.

844 A Divert into other channels: For the figure cf. Rep. 485 D 8. Cf. su¬
pra , 736 B 3; Eurip. Suppl. mi; Emped. (Diels) 195. Cf. on Laches 193 E.

853 C For men , not gods: Cf. 713 B ff. So it has been said that modern
utopias are apparently inhabited by gods.

853 C Weakness of human nature: Cf. infra on 875 B 8; Ar. Pol. 1332 a
1 4, Kai to Ka\ cos avayKaioos exova iv.

854 A Proem or chant: Cf. Cic. De leg. II. 59; Livy I. 26. 6, “lex horrendi
carminis.”

857 C-864 E A rambling digression: Cf. for other digressions 864 C,
owodev e^Tj/iev; Theaet. 172-77; Phileb. 28C-30E; Polit. 263 C, 287 AB,
302 B; Rep. 4 66 DE, 471 C, 572 B, 568 D. Cf. supra , 697 C, 753 D-754 D,
642 A, 682 E, 701 D; Cratyl. 438 A. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1095 b x4*

860 D Which Plato still affirms: Cf. Unity (1904), p. 9; Taylor (1925),
p. 64. Plato always formally maintained that all wrongdoing is involuntary.
Cf. Apol. 26 A; Prot. 345 D, 358 CD; Meno 77, 78; Gorg. 4 66 E, 467 B = Rep.
577 E = Laws 688 B; Rep. 382 A(?), 413 A(P), 492 E(?), 589 C; Phileb. 22 B;
Soph. 228 C, 230 A; Tim. 86 D; Laws 731 C, 734 B; Hipp . Min. 376 B. Cf.
Xen. Mem. III. ix. 4; IV. vi. 6. Cf. Milton’s “which also the Peripatetics do
rather distinguish than deny.”

857 CD The two types of physicians: Cf. supra , 720 A ff.

858 AB No compulsion of haste: Cf. supra on 781 DE.

858 A Limiting ourselves to the necessary: Cf. Shorey, Laws, p. 353, n. 1,
on good versus necessary. Cf. supra, p. 616.

859 B Before proceeding to build: Cf. Ar. Pol. 1326 a 4; Tim. 69 A 6.

858 C Laws are a form of literature: Cf. 81 1 C, 957 D; Phaedr . 257-58,
278 C-E; Friedliinder, I, 134.

859 E To punish justly is beautiful: Cf. on Gorg. 476 CD.

860 E Commit injustice willingly: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1134 a 17, 1114 a 11,
1 1 14 b 30. Teichmiiller attributes the distinction to Aristotle.

860-61 Indispensable legal distinction: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. on free will, III.
1109 b 3 ff.; Unity, p. 10.

862 B Intention of the doer: The intention determines the moral quality
of an act. Arnold, Roman Stoicism, p. 87, overlooks this. Brook Adams says
“reum non facit nisi mens rea” in the middle of the Leges Henrici ( ca . 1118)
is taken bodily out of a sermon of St. Augustine. Cf. Horace Ep. I. 16. 56,
“damnum est non facinus mihi facto lenius isto”; Huxley, Evolution and

LAWS— NOTES

641

Ethics , p. 57; Norvin, Olympiodorus , p. 290. Cf. Ar. NzV. 1105 a 30, b 6,
1 144 a 13 ff., 1374 a; Seneca De benefic . VI. 1 1, “Voluntas est, quae apud
nos ponit officium.”

863 BC Parts or junctions : Cf. supra , 633 A 8-9; Unity, p. 42.

865 ff. Eumenides and the orations of Antiphon: Cf. 865 E, Taparropevos
avTos TapaTTei; 871 A, vpveiv; 872 E, bpaaavTL .... tv adeiv; 873 A, rj 8paaaaa
\pvxv- Cf. Jebb, Attic Orators , on Antiphon.

865 DE Popular superstition: Cf. 870 DE, 913 C, 931 BC, 926 E-927 A,
and on Phaedo 61 D and 62 B.

865 D Tale: cos apa is often a warning that Plato does not affirm the liter¬
al truth of the statement. Cf. 871 B, 872 E; Phaedr . 245 A; Rep . 364 B,
364 E, 381 E, 391 E, 392 A, 414 D, 438 E, 468 E, 568 A, Apol. 40 E.

865 E As they roll around: This is not superstition but the human psy¬
chology of moods determined by the associations of the recurrent seasons and
anniversaries. Cf. Tennyson, In Mem., lxxviii, cvii, cxv, and passim. Anthro¬
pology corrupts the judgment even of Andrew Lang, World of Homer, p. 134,
“Plato says that the ghost of the victim communicates its own uneasy emo¬
tions to the slayer telepathically.,, Plato does not. Cf. the two apa s and pvqpqv
avppaxov ex uv.

867 An intermediate place between the voluntary and the involuntary: Ar.
Eth. Nic. III. 1 1 10 a 11.

867 AB They resemble: Cf. infra, 933 DE. Plato often evades in this way
or by some synonym for intermediate the difficulties of a too rigid or precise
classification. Cf. Euthyd. 305 C; Laws 878 B 6. Cf. Ar. Eth. 1110 a n. Cf.
J. Souilhe, La notion platonicienne de V intermediate dans la phil. (Paris, 1919).

870 CD Ambition and fear: Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1382 b.

873 C 8 Cowardly suicide: On suicide in Plato cf. on Phaedo 61 C. Cf.
Inge, Christian Ethics, p. 394.

875 A The common, not the private weal: Cf. infra, 923 AB; Rep . 341-42,
420-21, 466 A, 519 E. Cf. also 757 D.

875 B 8 Human nature: Cf. 691 C, 713 C, 854 A; Symp. 207 D; infra,
947 E; Rep. 395 B; Theaet. 149 C; Tim. 90 C. Doring (pp. 14-15) finds con¬
tradiction with 713 C, E and 832 C.

875 B 7 Greed and self-seeking: Cf. 906 C; Gorg. 508 A; Rep. 359 C; and
on Gorg. 483 C.

875 C Superior to knowledge: Cf. Polit. 293 C 7 ff., 295 D 7, 295 B 4,
297 A; Ar. Pol. 1 134 a 35. Prot. 352 B is irrelevant.

875 D Justice to particular cases: Cf. Polit. 295 AB; Ar. on equity, Eth .
Nic. 1 137 b 13, 1282 b 4, 1269 a 10, 1286 a 10.

876 B Tumultuous: Cf. Apol. 30 C 2; Euthyph. 5 BC, 3 E. Cf. De Quin-
cey’s tirade on Athenian courts.

876 BC As little discretion as possible: Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1354 a 33-34, Po/.
1282 b 3-4; Zeller, Ar., II, 244 (Eng.), strangely says that Aristotle, unlike
Plato, believes in the rule of law.

880 Eff. Strike a parent: Cf. Aristoph. Clouds 1376 ff, 1421 ff; Rep .

574 C.

Present day: Cf. C. C. J.

Webb, Studies in the History of Natural Theology;

642

WHAT PLATO SAID

Shorey in Hastings, IX, 861 and on Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece,
Phil. Rev., 1909, pp. 59-63.

885 B Preamble: Cf. 718 ff., 854, 845 D, with 890 B 5, 887 A, 887 C,
907 D.

885 B Three possible heresies: Cf. Epict. Biss. I. 12. 1. Cf. Sir Thomas

Browne, Vulgar Errors, chap, x, “The Endeavours of Satan,” who is evidently
paraphrasing Plato: “To instil a belief in the mind of man, there is no God
at all . When he succeeds not thus high, he labours to introduce a second¬

ary and deductive atheism; that although men concede there is a God, yet
should they deny his providence.”

Impiety in word: Cf., e.g., among many others John M. Robertson, A Short
History of Free Thought , p. 116, “The Laws classes Plato finally on the side of
the fanatics.” For “fanatics” cf. on Phaedo 97-98 and on Apol. 26 DE.

886 AB Moral will: But his rhetoric seems to countenance it in 888 B 3-
5. Cf. F. Brunetiere, Discours de cojnbat (2d ser.), p. 198, “Les temps ne sont
plus, ou Ion pouvait imputer 1’incredulite des esprits a la corruption des
occurs.” Cf. Cic. De nat. deor. I. 23.

Knowing and believing: Cf. Unity, p. 9, no man who knows the right will
do the wrong if we refuse the name of knowledge to any cognition that is not
strong enough to control the will. Cf. on 860 D. Cf. Prot. 352 B. Plato con¬
sciously employs words in a special sense for edification. Cf. Laches 191 E,
196 E; Laws 633 DE; Rep . 429 C, 443 E ff.; Polit . 306 B; Laws 689, 696 C
8-9, 710 A; Theaet. 176 C.

Primacy of soul: Cf. 892 BC, Class. Phil., IX, 316-17; Phileb. 29-30; Epin .
980 D 6 ff., 982 B 5 ff., 984 B 7, 988 D; Tim. 34 B 10.

891 C The stars: Tenn., In Mem., iii, “The stars, she whispers, blindly
run.”

886 E 1 Cook up: Lucian Anacharsis 19; Arnold, Essays in Crit., p. 216,
“The fictitious quarrel which Christianity has cooked up between them.”
Jowett’s “And that all religion is a cooking up of words” is wrong.

889 C 7 After-growth: Cf. Ar. Met. 1091 a 33; Alciphron Ep. III. 40; Edu¬
cation of Henry Adams, p. 451, “Chaos was the order of nature, order was the
dream of men, etc.”; Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, I, 9, “Mind and
the world of mind, society, government, the churches, religion, law, are prod¬
ucts which have grown up under the pressure of the constant and supreme
biological need, and exist only to meet that need.”

889 E Art of justice: Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., XVI (1921), 164-68. Cf.
further Epin. 983 BC; George Fox apud Huxley, Christianity and Agnosticism,
p. 1 92; Voltaire, “C’est qu’on m’a donne un nom qui ne me convient pas; on
m’appelle nature et je suis tout art”; and also contra, Soph. 265 E 3 and Tim.
33 D 1, eK Texvrjs.

890 A Mob in awe: Plato does not quite say this but means it. Cf. Rep.
363; Eurip. Electra 743-44; Critias frag. Sisyphus I. 17 ff. (Nauck, p. 771);
Lucret. II. 622, “Ingratos animos atque impia pectora volgi.”

887 DE Habits and ceremonies: Cf. Glover, Conflict of Religions, p. 11;
Pater, Marius, “Daily from the time when his childish footsteps were still

LAWS— NOTES

643

uncertain, had Marius taken them [the gods] their portion of the family meal
at the second course amid the silence of the company”; Emerson, Method of
Nature , “What a debt is ours to that old religion which in the childhood of
most of us still dwelt like a Sabbath morning in the country of New England”;
Mill, Utility of Religion , “Any system of social duty which mankind might
adopt even though divorced from religion would have the same advantage
from being inculcated from childhood, etc.”; Shelley, Queen Mab, specious
names/ Taught in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour.”

Confident dogmatism: Cf. supra , p. 345.

888 A 7 Thou art young: Cf. Arnold, Pref., God and the Bible , “Only when
one is young and headstrong can one stand by the sea of time, and instead of
listening to "the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves, choose to fill the air
with one’s own whoopings to start the echoes.”

885 D 6 Dispersion qf such literature: Plato is careful to distinguish the
objectionable anthropomorphism of the older mythological poets which he
is not here criticizing (886 C 5-6) from the new philosophical atheism.

890 D 6 Not inferior to Nature: Cf. Shorey, Tim. I, p. 405; supra, p. 46.

Oppositions of science: I Tim. 6:20 is an illustration of Plato s feeling if
not a parallel.

892 A 2 Ignored the soul: It is idle to speculate or dogmatize as to precise¬
ly which Presocratics are in Plato’s mind. Cf. Shorey, Greek Phil., in Hast¬
ings. Encyc.; on Soph. 242 C.

893-94 Classification: Plato amuses himself with a classification of ten
kinds of motion. In Tim. 43 B there are six. Cf. 896 A-C, 897 E-898 B, and
the classifications in the Politicus.

895 D Three things: Cf. 964 A 6-7; Theaet. 177 E 1; Soph. 218 C; Polit.
267 A 5. Ep. VII. 342 A is not absolutely un-Platonic in thought but is an
intolerably crude and pedantic elaboration of the idea.

896 E Two at least: Polit. 270 A I contra.

897 BC Good type of soul: The revolution of the heavens is that of the
same and hence pertains to the good soul. Cf. Ti?n. 40 AB. Cf. Tim. 29-30;
Phileb. 28-29.

Can be bought: 885 B, 888 C, 905 D-907 B, 948 C 4-5. Cf. 716 E; Rep.
364 B fF., 365 E; Ale. II 149 E; Homer II. IX. 497 ff.

Pope: Cf., e.g., Pope’s epigrammatic formulation of his own or Boling-
broke’s notes from Malebranche, Leibnitz, Wollaston, etc., Essay on Man:

’Tis but a part we see and not the whole [I, 60].

.... The first almighty cause

Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws [I, 145].

Shall gravitation cease if you go by? [IV, 128.]

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call
May, must be right as relative to all [I, 52]*

God sends not ill if rightly understood
Or partial ill is universal good [IV, 1 14].

644

WHAT PLATO SAID

All nature is but art unknown to thee;

All chance direction which thou canst not see [I, 289].

The good must merit God’s peculiar care,

But who but God can tell us who they are [IV, 135].

Cf. Boethius IV. 6. 100.

.... And in thy scale of sense

Weigh thy opinion against Providence.

Call imperfection what thou fanciest such [I, 119].

Presumptuous man, the reason thou wouldst find [I, 35].

899 D 7 Affinity to the divine: Cf. Prot. 322 A 4; Menex. 237 D 7; Soph.
265 D; and perhaps Phileb. 28 D; Arnold, God and the Bible , p. 78, “Both by
the operation of the law itself and by man’s inward sense of affinity and re¬
sponse to it”; Bacon, Essays , “Of Atheism,” “And if he be not akin to God by
his spirit he is a base and ignoble creature.”

902-3 Neglects details: Cf. 900 C, 901 CD; Cic. Nat. deor. II. 66, “Magna
di curant, parva negligunt”; Herod. VII. 108; Eurip., frag. 964, with Plu¬
tarch’s comments; Mor. 464 A, 81 1 D; Nemesius Nat. hom. 354; and on the
whole question Sext. Empir. (Bekker) 121; Tucker, Light of Nature (London,
1848), II, 348, “We do not say this of an earthly politician.” But cf. Ar. Eth.
Nic. 1 178 b on the difficulty of attributing the moral virtues to God.

Of the whole: Cf. Pope supra; Ovid’s “Summa tamen omnia constant”;
Emerson’s “The infinite lies stretched in smiling repose”; Descartes’s “God
might have made me more perfect if I alone existed, but it is a greater perfec¬
tion in the universe that some of its parts are not exempt from defect”; the
arguments of the deity in Milton and the complacent sentences of Leibnitz
in acceptance of individual suffering so bitterly satirized by James. But if
the youth apostrophized were to answer with Tennyson’s

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,

Tho’ the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy’s?

Tennyson’s mouthpiece can only reaffirm his faith in the moral government
of the universe and appeal to our ignorance of the design that may inform the
whole.

Vast arcs of the celestial sphere
Subtend such little angles here.

903 D Draughts -player: Cf. Heraclit., frag. 52 (Diels), and Omar Khay¬
yam:

Impotent pieces of the game he plays
Upon this checker-board of nights and days.

904 C Left to our own wills: Cf. Rep. 617 E 3; Tim. 87 B. Laws 861-64 C
is only an apparent contradiction. The freedom of the will in Plato is an
ethical, not a scientific, doctrine. He feels with Mill that it is desirable that
all men should believe it of themselves and disbelieve it of others. Zeller,

LAWS— NOTES 645

pp. 851-55; Jowett, III, 408 and 425, do not quite understand this. Cf. Unity,
pp. 9-10; Zeller, Ar . (Eng.), II, 113.

904 D Gravitates : On this law of spiritual gravitation cf. Tim. 42 C; Gard¬
ner, Dante and the Mystics , pp. 59-60; Dante, Paradiso , I, 109-26, 136-41;
Emerson, Worship: “That the police and sincerity of the universe are se¬
cured by God’s delegating his divinity to every particle.”

905 A Boast: Cf. Aesch. Ag. 533; Eumen. 58; Emerson, Compensation ,
“But the brag is on his lips; the conditions are in his soul.”

905 B In whose lives .... thou thinkest to see: Cf. Job 21:7 fF. Isoc. Pan -
ath. i86-87;Thrasymachus (Diels), frag. 8; Schmidt, Ethikd. Griechen , p. 93;
Cic. Nat. deor. III. 32 and Ennius there; also Rep. 613 A; Boethius I. c. 5.

Hortatory preambles: Cf. 916 D-917 B, 930 E-932 A, 934 D-935 B, 942 A-
E, 949 E-950 D, 959 A-D. Cf. also 913 BC, 920 DE, 923 AB, 928 E, 936 B,
943 L-944 C, 948 B-D.

913 A I that of others: Jowett fancifully reads the Golden Rule into these
words, but that, curiously enough, was anticipated rather by the rhetoric of
Isocrates. Cf. Demon. 14; To Nic. 24; Nic. 49-50, 61, 62; Panegyr. 81. Cf.
Diels Thales 7 and 13; Benn, Greek Philosophers , p. 55.

913 D What you did not deposit: Cf. Diog. L. I. 57, Solon, a jlltj eOov /xij
aveXy. Cf. 941 CD.

913 B Move the immovable: A more conservative and religious proverbial
equivalent of “quieta non movere” and “let sleeping dogs lie.” Cf. 684 E,
843 A. It is playfully varied in Phileb. 15 C; Theaet. 181 AB. Cf. commenta¬
tors on Virgil Aen. III. 700.

914 A Give information: Cf. 730 D, 843 B, 932 D.

916 D Unadulterated: Cf. Theognis 117 and 965.

917 B With light lips: This is often misunderstood. Plato reinforces the
principle that we are not to take the names of the gods in vain, by the impli¬
cation that the impurity and unholiness of the majority of mankind makes it
unfit that their lips should sully the divine name.

919 B Poverty and wealth: Cf. supra , 679 BC, 728 E-729 A, 744 D; Rep.
421 D-422 A, 551 D ff. Cf. Newman, p. 136.

926-28 Care of orphans: Cf. supra , 766 C, 877 C, 909 CD; Rep. 554 C.

928 C For malversation: Cf. the case of Demosthenes.

928 DE Disinheritance of a son by an angry father: A favorite theme of
the later Greek and Roman rhetoric. Cf. the elder Seneca Controversiae IX,
XII, XVIII, XXXI; Excerpta I, IV, VIII, etc.

931 A Visible gods: On visible and invisible gods cf. Tun. 40 D, 41 A;
Phaedr. 246 C; Epirt . 985 BC.

931 A In the images that represent them: An anticipation of the whole
later literature about image worship and idolatry. Cf. Epin. 983 E 6. Cf.
Dio Chrys. XII. 399 R flf., Max. of Tyre VIII. Cf. Ruskin on idolatry.

931 A At the hearth: Cf. Menander, Sentent ., vo/jtL^e cravru tovs yovels elvai
Oeovs ; Shakes., Midsummer-Nights Dream , I, i, 47, “To you your father
should be as a god.”

931 BC Tales of Oedipus: Appeals to popular superstition again. Cf. su¬
pra on 865 DE. Cf. Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps , p. 247.

646

WHAT PLATO SAID

932 E ff. Injuries by potions: 865 B ff. deals with death by poisoning.

933 B 6 When we ourselves have no definite proof to give: I think this is
the meaning. Cf. supra , p. 394, on the impossibility of freeing the multitude
from superstition.

933 DE His likeness to the injurer: Cf. supra on 867 A. Westermarck
(i Origin and Development of Moral Ideas , II, 652) wrongly translates: “He
who seems to be the sort of man who injures others by magic knots or en¬
chantments.” Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan , I, 2: “For as for witches, I think not
their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for
the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their
purpose to do it if they can.” Cf. Selden, Table Talk , CXLIX: “Law against
witches does not prove that there be any; but it punishes the malice of these
people, etc.”; Farnell, Higher Aspects of Greek Religion , p. 7: “Spells and in¬
vocations concerning which the philosopher in his mental decay (!) is not able
to make up his mind”; Lecky, Rationalism , I, 112: “He [Montaigne] was no
doubt perfectly aware that the Laws of Plato, of the twelve tables, of the con¬
suls, of the emperors, and of all nations and legislators .... had decreed
capital penalties against sorcerers.” All books that quote any passage of the
Laws as proof that Plato was personally superstitious are uncritical.

936 A Not in passionate earnest: Cf. 829 CD. Cf. 816 E on comedy.

936 BC No beggars: It is said that there were few or none in China in the
great age.

937 D 7 Its natural canker or blight: Krjpe s. Cf. Phaedr. 240 AB. Cf. De-
moc., frag. 191 (Diels1, p. 441), Krjpas ev rep /3icp. Cf. Democ., frag. 285. Cf.
Isoc. II. 35 where avp4>opav = Krjpe s here.

938 C On a second conviction: This is obviously one of what I have called
Plato’s Ruskinian boutades, about as serious as Ruskin’s desire to burn the
city of New York. Cf. on 829 DE.

942 D 5 Unfastidiousness: This is usually mistranslated. Cf. Class. Phil.y
XII (1917), 308-10. Cf. Ale. I 122 C 5.

944 B ff. Shield-flinger: Cf. Aristoph. Clouds 353; Birds 1481 ; Peace 1186.
Cf. Hug on Symp. 179 A.

947 E Frailty of human nature: Cf. on 853 C and on 875 B 8.

948 B Judicial oaths: Cf. Wilamowitz, I, 652.

948 D A change in their laws: Cf. perhaps 853 C. This is the thesis of
Fustel de Coulanges’s La cite antique.

948 C-E Rather of Athens than of his own utopian city: Cf. 876 BC,
744 D. Cf. Rep. VIII. For the speaker’s falling out of his role and becoming
the mouthpiece of Plato, cf. on Symp. 179 D and Parmen. 135 BC.

948 A Are perjurers: Cf. Gomperz, III, 255. Cf. Isoc. To Demonicus 23;
Eurip. Medea 438, ^e^cLKe ft opKwv xapi s.

949 A 5 Gain is at stake: On Kep8os cf. the Hipparchus.

950 B We cannot disregard the opinions of others: Cf. Isoc. Panath. 261;
To Philip 79; Demon. 17; Democr., frag. 153. This is no contradiction of
Crito 44 C 6; Gorg. 471-72, 474 B 1 ; Polit. 260 Bn.

LAWS— NOTES

647

950 C Best way to be thought is to be good: Cf. Heraclitus, frag. 135 (Diels3,
I, 104); Xen. Mem . I. 7. 1-2; II. 6. 39; Ar. Soph. El. 165 a 30; Isoc. I. 17 (?);
Anon. Iambi. (Diels, p. 577); Cic. De offic. II. 12. So Guicciardini apud Croce,
Philos, of Practical, p. 109.

955 D Bribes under whatsoever pretext: Cf. the case of Bacon.

956 A Prohibition of gold and ivory: Much quoted. Cf. Cic. De leg. II. 18,
and the Christian Fathers.

957 A Repeat twice and thrice the right: Cf. Gorg. 498 E; Phileb. 60 A. Cf.
Emped. (Diels) 192.

957 AB To guide them: For the idea that there is much good in the ex¬
perience of the past cf. supra , 802 B, 844 A, 960 C; Polit. 299 C 8-9, 30° B;
and on Prot. 326. Cf. also on 800 A. Cf. Novotny, Plato's Epistles , p. 192.
Cf. also perhaps on Polit. 268 E.

957 D Of debate: Note 5ia avyx&PWeuv. Dialectic proceeds through the
things conceded by the interlocutor. Cf. the criticism of the reasoning of the
mathematicians in Rep. 533 C, where opo\oy lav carries the same suggestion.

957 D “ No?nos ” with “nous”-. Cf. 714 A, vox) 5lclvoht).

959 B Soul is the real self: Cf. on Ale. / 130 C. On the superiority of soul
over body cf. 870 B, 697 B, 967 B, D.

959 CD Make the best of it: to 5e irapov deiv ev Troieiv. Often mistrans¬
lated. Cf. Gorg. 499 C and Thucyd. I, 82. 6, evirpeirus deaden.

960 C In the name of the third Fate: Atropos. Cf. Rep. 620 E. For the
idea cf. supra , 816 B. Cf. also on 957 AB; Epin. 982 C.

961 A Of a special synod: 951 D ff. Cf. also 908 A 4, 909 A 3.

962 D 4 One and only aim of true statesmanship: For the figure cf. 934 B 4
and Symp. 219 B. For the idea cf. on 705 D. Cf. also Shorey, Laws , pp. 362-
63. Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic.y init. Cf. supra , 632 C 5.

Wrote in 1903: Unity , pp. 86-88. I add only a few references and footnotes.

Or of the ruled: Dissertations and Discussions , IV, 289.

With mathematics and astronomy: Greek Thinkers (trans.), p. 466. To like
effect Zeller, pp. 955, 956.

Even in the first book: 632 C. The parallelism with the Republic is obvious.
There, too (412 CD, 414 B), there is a similar anticipation of the need of
guardians who know as distinguished from the assistants. In Laws 818 A,
there is another anticipation of the higher education. Mathematics only is
mentioned because Plato is explaining that it is not needful for the multitude
to study it profoundly. There is no occasion for mentioning any other element
of the higher education. The possessors of (frpovriais will surely be able /car’
eibr\ ^T]re iv (630 E) and will practice the dialectical methods of the “recent”
Sophist , Philebus , and Politicus. Zeller’s attempt to distinguish between 4>po-
vyaLS and the vovs of the Republic is a false point. (bpovrjaLS is used in Phaedo
69 B.

Of the early dialogues: Prot. 31 1 B; Gorg. 447, 448, 449 Ei Duthyd. 291 C;
Rep. 333.

963 D To exhibit their unity is harder: Cf. Phileb. 18 E, thus eanv ev /cal
7roX\a avT&v eKarepov. Cf. ibid. 24 E.

648

WHAT PLATO SAID

963-64 But the “logos” of things: For ovopa , irpaypa , and \6yos c f. Soph.
218 BC. Cf. supra , 895 D; Ep. VII. 342 B. Cf. Ogden, Meaning of Meanings
p. 13. Soph. 234 C is not quite relevant. Cf. Polit. 267 A 5, tov \6yov rod ovo-
fiaros. For the idea that he who knows can tell cf. on Charm. 159 A.

965 C Look to one idea: Cf. Phaedr. 265 D; and with tclvttjs ovk e<m aa-
(frearepa peOodos cf. Phileh. 16 B; Phaedr . 266 B; Rep. 533 B.

The thing: Friedlander (II, 680) quotes Taylor (1925): “Though the name
‘dialectic* is not used the demand for the thing remains unabated. ”

966 C As we have done: In Book X.

The “ Republic ” and earlier dialogues: Gomperz supports his view of the
antidialectical tendency of Plato’s mind in the Laws by the hostility of the
Sophist to every kind of antilogy. But surely eristic is one thing and dialectic
another. The true Socratic elenchus is described and the difficulty of dis¬
tinguishing it from eristic indicated in a locus classicus in the Sophist (230
B ft.); and both the Sophist and the Politicus employ the keenest dialectic in
order to meet and defeat eristic on its own ground {Soph. 259 CD). In the
Philebus , which Gomperz thinks late, dialectic is still the highest science of
truth {Phileb. 58). But Plato had other interests than dialectic, and it is un¬
reasonable to expect him to fill the Laws and Timaeus with repetitions of
what had been said once for all in the Sophist , Politicus , and Philebus.

EPINOMIS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cf. the literature on the Laws .

Grote, IV, 420-30.

Harward, J., The “ Epinomis ” of Plato. Translated with Introduction and
notes. Oxford, 1928.

Heidel, W. A., Pseudo-Platonica , pp. 72-78. Baltimore, 1896.

Muller, F., Stilistische Untersuchungen der “ Epinomis ” Philippos von

Opus. 1927.

Raedf.r, pp. 413-19.

Reuther, H., li Epinomide” Platonica . Diss., Leipzig, 1907.

Taylor, pp. 497-502.

Zeller, pp. 1040 ff.

The Epinomis is rejected by: Zeller ( Ph . d. G.y II, 14, 1040, n. 3), Croiset,
Windelband-Goedeckemeyer, Ritter (who, however, in his Unters. iiber Plato ,
pp. 91 ff., finds that stylistically the Epinomis agrees perfectly with the Laws),
Alline (Hist, du texte de Platon , p. 35), Immisch (Philologus, LXXII [1913],
17), Wilamowitz (PL, II2, 654), F. Muller, in his dissertation on the Epinomis
(Stilistische Untersuchung der “ Epinomis ” des Philippos von Opus [1927]), and
W. Jaeger, review of Taylor’s Plato , Gnomon , 1928, p. 8.

It is accepted by: H. Reuther, Raeder (pp. 413 ff.), who discusses the
question in detail, Ueberw.-Pr. (Philos, d. Altert. [1926], p. 327), and J. Stenzel
(Zahl und Gestalt bei PL und Ar. [1924], pp. 103 f.), who are not yet convinced
of its spuriousness; Harward, Taylor (p. 498), Gomperz (III, 31 1).

NOTES

The summary and the excellent translation of Mr. J. Harward do not bring
out the faults of style and arrangement which I believe prove that Plato could
not have written this dialogue. Professor Wilamowitz says that the style is
an unsuccessful imitation of the Laws. But as it is accepted by Professor
Taylor (p. 14) and by Raeder (413), and Mr. Harward affirms that those who
have any feeling for Greek scholarship must recognize that its style “is an
exact replica of the Laws” it is perhaps safest not to dogmatize.

Prolixity of the style: The first sentence alone, like the first sentence of the
Theages , is an indication of spuriousness, unless we assume that senility had
set in after the Laws.

Transition to Aristotle: Jaeger (Aristoteles, p. 154) refers to a “vollkommen-
sten Willensuberlegung [apLarr] /SouXeims] der Gestirnseele” in 982 C. The
Greek words quoted are not there, and the idea is there only by inference.
Pie goes on to argue that Aristotle at first held this doctrine of the “freiwillig
.... Sternbewegung,” but in Eth. 1112 a 21 “bestreitet ausdriicklich dass

649

650

WHAT PLATO SAID

es eine /SouAetms w epl t&v aidlwv geben kann.” He apparently misconstrues
irepi and converts Aristotle’s simple common-sense statement that no one
(no man) deliberates about eternal things (which are necessarily true and fixed)
into the meaning that there is no deliberation or will in the stars.

Aristotle s “ Metaphysics 981 a 27 ff., 982 b 24 with Rep. 429 A 2.

975 B Productive arts: Poiesis is generalized in Sy?np. 205 B, but without
the disparaging connotation of the word here. But cf. Rep. 533 B for the
idea. Charm . 163 B and D are hardly relevant.

976 A 6 Navigators: Cf. Gorg. 51 1 DE. Cf. the classification in Polit. 279
C ff .

978 BC For learning it: Cf. Shorey on t(Phileb. 11 BC,” Class. Phil., Ill
(1908), 343-45*

978 D Learns to count: Cf. Laws 818 C 5-6 and Tim. 47 A with 39, supra ,
p. 616.

981 C The aether: Cf. Zeller apud Harward, p. 123; Jaeger, pp. 315 and
146, where by a slip of the pen he speaks of the “Vier Elementargotterklas-
sen [sicl] des Timaios” (39 E).

982 CD Fickle and irresolute: Cf. perhaps on Gorg. 482 AB; T. L. Heath,
Aristarchus of Samos , p. 185; Laws 966-67; Cic. Nat. deor. II. 16, “Sensum
autem astrorum atque intelligentiam maxime declarat ordo eorum atque
constantia. Nihil est enim quod ratione et numero moveri possit sine con-
silio. Aristotle and Ruskin likewise affirm that order and regularity are char¬
acteristics of the higher organism. Jaeger speaks of the “tollste Missverstiind-
nis der Quelle durch Cicero.”

982 Choric dance: Cf. on Tim. 40 C; Lucret. II. 1097; Job 38:31-33;
Minucius Felix XVII. 4.

983 C With such precision: Cf. Laws 967 DE; Cic. Nat. deor. II. 16, ‘‘In¬
telligentiam in sideribus.” Cf. Jean, “The universe seems to be nearer to a
great thought than to a great machine”; Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics ,
P* 34» “dhe planets, it has been said, are constantly engaged in working out
differential equations.”

985 C Visible heavenly gods: Cf. Laws 931 A; Tim. 40 D, 41 A; Phaedr.
246 C.

Unlike the gods: Cf. Phileb. 33 B 8 and Ep. III. 315 C 8, which has been
supposed to be an Epicurean touch. Cf. on Laws 792 D.

987 B Equally with the sun: For €7r i 987 B 5, cf. Laws 760 D 2;

Shorey on Tim. 36 C, AJP , X, 55. For the “later” astronomy of Plato and
the question whether it recognized the movement of the earth, cf. on Tim.
40 BC, and Heath, Aristarchus of Samos , pp. 174 ff.

Breeds the best men: Cf. Rep. 435 E (Loeb); Laws 747 D, 704-5, 625 D;
Menex. 237 CD; Ti?n. 24 C 6.

991 D Full of gods: Cf. Laws 899 B. Attributed to Thales, Diog. L. I. 1.
27, Ar. De an. 411 a 8; Cic. De leg. II. n. Benn ( Greek Philosophers , p. 6)
calls it the ironical fetishism of Thales; Burnet ( Early Greek Philos ., p. 51)
says that we must not make too much of the saying. But it has been endlessly
commented on with contradictory interpretations.

EPINOMIS— NOTES 65 1

991 D Neglect us: Cf. Laws 885 B 8, 888 C c, 899 D c, 900 C-90C B,
948 C; Rep. 365 DE.

988 A Impious: Cf. on Laws 821 AB, 967 D; Ar. Met. 982 b 28 ff.; Eth.
Nic. 1177 b 3 1 ff., cited by Jaeger, p. 1 68, is irrelevant.

992 Unity with himself: A neo-Platonic but also a Platonic conception.
Cf. on Gorg. 482 BC.

992 BC Continents of the blessed: Cf. Gorg. 523 B, 524 A, 526 C; Phaedo
hi A 6; Pindar 01. II.

ALCIBIADES I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arbs, H., De “ Alcibiade /” qui fertur Platonis. Diss., Kiel, 1906.

Croiset, M., Platon: CEuvres completes (Bude), J, 49 ff. Paris, 1920.
Dittmar, H., “Aischines von Sphettos,” Philol. Unters. (hrsg. von Kiessling
und Wilamowitz), XXI (1912), 65-177.

Friedlander, Platon , II, 233-45.

- , Der grosse “ Alkibiades.” Bonn, 1921. Teil II, “Kritische Eror-

terung.” 1923.

Heidel, W. A., Pseudo-Platonica , pp. 61-72. Baltimore, 1896.

Pavlu, J., “ Alcibiades prior ’ quo jure vulgo tribuatur PI atom, VIII, Part I,
1-109. Diss. Philol. Vindobonenses.

- , Nachtrdge zum pseud. “ Alkib . “Mitteil. d. Ver. Id. Philologen in

Wien” (1929), pp. 21-26.

Taylor, Plato , pp. 522-26.

NOTES

Best introduction to the Platonic philosophy: Cf. Proclus in Plat. Alcib . 7,
p. 297 (Cousin); Olympiod. in Alcib., p. 10 (Creuzer); Fabric., Biblioth. gr.,
HP, 83.

Its thoughts in another mind: Cf. Symp. 209 B 7, and perhaps Prot. 348 D.
Expressed in other dialogues: Cf. the notes infra , passim ; 104 B with Gorg.
466 C; 104 D, Tpay/ia, with Apol. 20 C; 104 E with Rep. 516 A; 109 B 9 with
Laches 184 DE; 108 B 6 with Meno 74 A 9, B 6-7, Gorg. 504 D 6; 109 A 5,
irpos tl reivei, with Laches 190 D, Prot. 345 C, Cratyl. 419 B, Symp. 188 D,
Rep. 454 AB and 464 D; 109 C, wouldn’t admit unjust intentions if he had
them, with Prot. 329 B; no A, answer what you believe, with Rep. 346 A
(Loeb), Gorg. 495 A; in B and in E, those who know agree, with Laches
184 D, 186 D; 114 A, Tpv<t>q s, cf. on Laches 179 D; 114 D, vfipLCTTr) s (cf. 109 D
G7ccd7rreis), cf. Meno 76 A 9; 114 E, no witness needed but his own mouth, cf.
Gorg. 471 E, 475 E; 119 B, eirl tcl rfjs TroXeus, etc., cf. Rep. 347 C, Gorg. 514 C;
and for the entire theme Symp. 216 A 5-6; 122 C 5, eux^petay /cat evKoXiau ,
cf. Laws 942 D; 123 E, QapKtiv /cat cos exet, cf. on Rep . 426 D (Loeb); 125
B 9, the good those able to rule, cf. Gorg. 488 D, 489 D, 491 B, Meno 71 E;
125 E, evpoyXLav, cf. Prot. 318 E; 121 ff., the cardinal virtues in the education
of the Persian kings, as in the Republic 485 ff. and the Symp. 196 D; 130 A 9,
ai ivapcfroTepov, cf. Symp. 209 B; 134 E, eyyvqdaaOai, etc., Phaedo 115 D.

Expressions which jar on the ear: in E, Kprjyvoi, seems impossible; 124
C 10, €7rt0ama, is strangely used. But cf. Isoc. Helena 17. 118 B 7, qrre ts
irpos, is unusual, as are avpfiaXXbvTwv iavrois (125 C 4) and SixbvoLav (126 C).
1 14 A, 7 rpodpopas rod Xoyov, does not recur in Plato, but is perhaps unobjec¬
tionable. The alternative “discover or learn” is thrice repeated (106 D, 1 1 2 D,

652

ALCIBIADES I— NOTES

653

1 13 E). Cf. on Laches 186 B. The idea “would not learn if you thought you
knew” occurs twice (106 D, 109 E). 112 D 8, ir\ava\ the word and the idea
are repeated seven times within a page. Cf. on Phaedo 79 C. The dialogue
in 104-5 ls crude. In 108 C 12 Socrates employs the spurious Socratic method
of eliciting the desired answer by a merely verbal association. The induction
in 1 14 B is overelaborated. The transitions are awkward or abrupt in 125 E,
126, 129 B.

The opinions of modern scholars are divided: The dialogue is rejected by:
Zeller (doubtful), Raeder, Ueberweg-Praechter, Wilamowitz, Taylor, W. Jae¬
ger (. Aristotelesy p. 169), E. Hoffmann ( Vortr . d. Bihlioth. Warb. [1923-24],
p. 56), Ivo Bruns (pp. 340-41). It has been defended as authentic by Stall-
baum, C. Hermann, Grote, R. Adam, M. Croiset, and especially by P. Fried-
lander (Der gross e “ Alkibiades” : Ein Weg zu Plato). Cf. also his Platon , II,
233 ff., and the Schlussbemerkung, pp. 243-45, where he considers some re¬
cent attacks on the genuineness of the dialogue.

Lesser hand: Cf. in addition to 129-30 and 132-33 the description of the
Spartan and Persian kings in 121 ff., 113 E, 132 A 5.

103 A Before approaching him: Cf. infra, 13 1 C ff.; Symp. 183 D ff.; Prot.
309 AB; Xen. Symp. VIII. 9 ff. For love of soul cf. on Symp. 181 B.

106 B Abrupt transition: Cf. infra , 128 A. Cf. Rep. 349 D; Theaet. 145 D;
Cratyl. 391 CD; Laches 193 E; Prot. 332 A, 351 B; Charm. 164 A; Phacdr.
259 E; Friedlander, II, 436. Cf. Mrs. Grace Hadley Billings* Chicago Diss.

(I9I5)> P- 5-

106 C As an adviser to the Athenians: Cf. Persius “rem populi tractas”;
Sat. IV. in it. Cf. Symp. 216 A 5-6; Menex. 234 AB; Xen. Mem. III. 6. 1;
Ar. Rhet. I. iv.

106 E He scorned the flute: Cf. Pindar Pyth. XII. 22; Wil., I, 50, n. 1.
109 E Did not know it already: Cf. 106 E; Meno 82 E, 84 B; Soph.
230 BC.

no B Affirmed that he knew: Cf. Shaw, Major Barbara , Act III : “Is there
anything you know or care for?” “I know the difference between right and

wrong.” “You don’t say so . Why man, you’re a genius .... at 24 too.”

in B Between a stick and a stone: For the idea cf. Polit. 286 A; Phaedr .
261 E ff . For \Wos and £6Xa cf. Parmen. 129 D; Gorg. 468 A; Theaet. 156 E.

1 13 D The useful , not the just: Cf. Ar. Rhet. 1358 b.

113E Arguments wear out: Cf. O. W. Holmes, Autocrat: “The truths a
man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter is
bound to use the same plane but once?”

1 14 B Able to teach Socrates: Cf. Euthyph. 5 A, 9 B 6; Hipp . Maj. 286 D,
291 B; and the jest in Gorg. 489 D 7 and Euthyd. 302 C 3.

114 D ff. Formulas: Cf. g, 115 C 6, 115 E 16, 116 A 3; 1 1 5 C 3, Kara rav-
tov ; 1 15 E 10 and 13, Kara .... irpa£iv; 1 16 A ioy kclQ’ oaov. For the ev tt par-
t€lv fallacy, n6B2ff., cf. on Charm. 173 D. For 114E, convince out of
his own mouth, cf. Gorg. 471 E ff., 474 A.

1 17 A Wanderings: Cf. on Phaedo 79 C.

1 18 C He who knows can teach: Cf. on Meno 99 B 7. For a7ro rod avroparov

654 WHAT PLATO SAID

(U8C3) cf- P>'ot- 323 C; Rep. 498 E; Cratyl. 397 A; Apol. 38 c, 41 D:
Meno 90 A.

1 19 C Real rivals : Cf. Isoc. Peace 60; Lucian Rhetor. 8l8cl(tk. 21.

121 ff. Most often quoted passages in Platonic literature: Almost too good
to be by anyone except Plato. Suggested by Xenophon, it has been conjec¬
tured. Xen. Cyropaedia I. 2-3; H. Arbs, De “ Alcib . /” qui fertur Platonis, pp.
29-30. J°el (Der echte und der Xenoph. Sokrates , I, 499-500) finds here a
strong influence of the Cyrus of Antisthenes. Pavlu (Diss. philol. Vindob .,
VIII, 1, 29) is of the opinion that this part shows no extraneous influence.

125 Bff. Reminiscences: 126 C ff. is a development of Rep. 602 D 5-6
and Euthyph. 7 B 10. 125 E ff., evPov\la, recalls Prot. 318 E ff.; Gorg. 511 D;
Rep. 428 B. 126 E perhaps suggests Lysis 208 D, 126 B 2; Laches 190 A. Cf!
133 B 4-

129 E Not identical with it: Cf. Lactantius De orig. etroris II. 3 (Migne,
VI [i], 264), “Hoc enim quod oculis subjectum est non homo scd hominis
receptaculum est.”

On the soul using the body cf. Nemesius De nat. horn. 1. Cf. Stockl, Gesch.
d. Philos, d. Mittelalters , II, 607-8, “Ad hoc evitandum Plato posuit, quod
homo non sit aliquid compositum ex anima et corpore, et quod ipsa anima
utens corpore sit homo”; Harris, Duns Scotus , II, 251, “De rerum principio
q. ix, art. 2, n. 12: ‘Plato enim posuit quod homo est ipse intellectus per se
subsistens, non corpus . . . . sed utens corpore, sicut navita nave.’ The actual
simile of the boatman and the boat I am unable to discover in Plato. Wadding
gives a marginal reference to the Alcibiades , where (130 sq.) the soul is said
to use the body as an instrument, but the boat is not specifically mentioned.”
The boat is from Ar. De an. 413 a 8-10.

130 C 3 The true self is the soul: Cf. Laws 959 A; Phacdo 1 15 C; Axiochus
365 E; Ar. Eth. Nic. 1178 a 2. Apelt also mentions Rep. 469 D; Laws 791 B,
870 B; and drags in Ar. Met. 1043 b 2. Cf. Epict. Diss. I. 1. 25.

131 A A thing of the true self: Cf. 128 CD, 133 D. Cf. Laws 732 A 2; Gorg.
in fine. (Self vs. things of self.) Cf. Isoc. Antid. 290; Tim . 90 B; Apol. 36 C 6;
Aug. De civ. dei VI. 9.

131 CD Lover of his soul: Cf. supra on 103 A; Symp. 181 B; Rep. by im¬
plication, 402 D 10; Xen. Symp. VIII. 9. Freq. in Greek comedy. Cf. on
Symp. 181 B.

132 D In another eye: Cf. Sir John Davies (1592), “And yet the lights
which in my tower do shine / Mine eyes, which view all objects nigh and far /
Look not into this little world of mine / Nor see my face in which they fixed
are.” Cf. Cic. Tusc. I. 27; Shakes., Tro. and Cress., Ill, 3, “Nor doth the eye
itself, — / That most pure spirit of sense, — behold itself.”

ALCIBIADES II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bickel, L, “Ein Dialog aus der Akademie des Arkesilas,” Archivf. Gesch. d.
Philos ., XVII (1904), 460-79.

Brunnecke, H., be “Alcibiade //” qui fertur Platonis. Diss., Gottingen, 1912.
Grote, pp. 1-32 (Alcibiadcs I and II).

Heidel, op. cit., pp. 56-59.

Souilhe, J., Bude Platon , XIII, Part II, “Dialogues suspects/’ 3 ff.
Taylor, Plato , pp. 526-29.

NOTES

Pray too specifically: Cf. Laws 687-88; Xen. Mem. I. 3. 2; Eurip. Hippol.
887-90, 1 166-70; Arnold, Roman Stoicism , p. 235; Pomponazzi, A. H. Douglas,

p. 206, “Unde Plato in 2. Alcibiade docet nos quomodo debemus orare .

Quod et concordat dicto Salvatoris nostri: Scilicet nescitis quid petatis.” (Cf.
Rom. 8:26 and Matt. 20:22.) Cf. Montaigne, I. 56. Cf. the subdivisions of
Emerson’s Sermon on Prayer: (1) Men are always praying. (2) All their
prayers are granted. (3) We must beware then what we ask. Cf. further Soc¬
rates’ prayer at the end of the Phaedrus , and on the general subject of prayer
in Plato cf. also on Laws 687 E.

Generally rejected: Cf. Ueberweg-Praechter, Philos, d. Alt. (1926), p. 199.
Certain mannerisms and defects of style: 141 D, T€ Ka'L vrpcotf a; 144 A,
elTrelv et; 147 E, iraXiv av pot donei; 148 A-B, aXXa papyov tl poi donei elvcu;
1 51 C, kclWlv'ikos yeveaOai tw g&v epaarw.

Conscious reminiscences of Plato: The dissertation of Bickel perhaps exag¬
gerates the number of these parallels. But cf. 139 B n, one thing can have
only one opposite; cf. on Prot. 332 C; 140 A, over-elaboration of the idea that
one cannot convert a universal affirmative; cf. on Euthyph. 12 A; 140A 1,
gvv re 8vo; 141 A 4, chairep ov8’ .... ov8\ cf. Apol. 21 D 5; 141 C, use makes a
thing good or evil; cf. on Euthyd. 280 E; 141 D 7, Archelaus, cf. Gorg. 470
D ff.; 141, wish to be tyrant; 143 C 1, ekfj \peyovras, cf. on Hipp. Maj. 286 C;
144 D 1, to pera rouro; 144 D, nothing good without the good; cf. 145 B,
146 E, and Gorg. 451, 511-12; 145 C 6, rov 8e pi] toiovtov ; 146 A with Gorg.
484 E; 147 A, TroXvpaOia, cf. infra , on 147 A; 147 B 1, dew, with Rep. 417 B 5.

Pushed to the Stoic extreme: The implication (138-39) that all error and
folly is madness, which, however, is refuted with distinctions by Socrates in
140 BC. Cf. von Arnim, Stoics , III, 164 ff.

Doubtful phrases: E.g., 130 C 10, 140 D 6, 142 C 5, 143 B 2, 144 A 1,
144 A 5, 144 D 9 (cf. 146 B 7), 145 E 7, 147 A 2, 148 A 10, 148 C 5, 149 C 3,
150 B 6, 150 C 1, 150 C 3 (cf. 141 C 9, 144 C 9), 151 A 6.

To have written them: E.g., 142 DE. Cf. Ale. I 123 A; Hipparch. 228 B;
Minos 318 E-319 A.

655

WHAT PLATO SAID

656

140 C Highest degree of folly: Cf. Laws 837 A on epws.

142 A Generals etc: Cf. Euthyd. 281 BC; Rep. 553 B; Laws 661 B; Isoc.
XV. 160.

142 BC Children: Cf. Juv. Sat. X; Antiphon, frag. 49 (Diels, II, 8o£);
Eurip. Medea 1094 ff.

142 D Own folly is the cause: Od. I. 32 ff. Cf. also Rep. 617 E 5, 619 C,
and on Phacdo 90 D.

143 CD Ignorance ?nay be a blessing: Ale. 1 117 D is not really pertinent.

144 D Knowledge of the good: Cf. Charm. 174 BC; Rep. 505 AB; and
supra , p. 71.

Think that they know: Cf. Ale. I 1 17 D and on Lysis 218 AB.

147 A Polymathy: Cf. Heraclit., frag. 40 (Diels, I3, 86); Laws 819 A 5;
Erast. 133 C and E, 139 A.

147 B Poetry is enigmatic: Cf. on Rep. 332 B (Loeb). Cf. Montaigne, II,
12, and for airoKpvTTTeadaL , Ruskin, Enigmas of life.

147 C Homer: The author attributes the Margites to Homer.

148 AB Spartans: Cf. Plut. Inst. lac. 27, p. 258 F.

149 A 5 Wealth: Cf. Ale. I 122 C ff. and Rep. 548.

148 E ff. Costly offerings: The idea of Horace’s Rustica Phidyle. Cf.
Shorey on Odes III. 23. 17-20. Cf. infra , 149 E; Laws 717 A, 885 D, 906 B;
Porph. De abst. II. 15.

From Homer: Cf. Wil., Homer und die " I lias ,” pp. 30-31.

150 C 8 Great-souled: Cf. Ar. Eth. 1123 a 34 ff. and An. post. 97 b 18.
150 D Cloud: Cf. Horn. II. V; Juv. Sat. X. 4, “Remota erroris nebula,”

with commentators there.

CLEITOPHON

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunnecke, H., “Kleitophon wider Sokrates,” Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos
XXVI (1913), 449-78.

Grote, G., Plato , III (1888), 413-26.

Grube, G. H. A., “The Cleitophon of Plato,” Class. Phil., XXVI (1931),
302-8.

Heidel, op. c it . , pp. 46-48.

Pavlu, J., Der pseudoplatonische “Kleitophon.” Progr. Znaim, 1909.
Souilhe, J., Bude Platon, XIII, Part II, “Dialogues suspects,” 163 ff.
Taylor, Plato, pp. 536-38.

NOTES

In the first book of the “Republic”: Rep. 328 B, 340 B. Cleitophon, a lead¬
ing Athenian politician, was active in the establishment of the 400 and is
mentioned by Ar. Const, of Athens XXIX. 3 and XXXIV. 3 as a warm sup¬
porter of the constitution of Cleisthenes (the iraTpios 7roXtr€ta). In Aristoph.
Frogs 967 he is introduced as a follower of the sophistical teaching of Euripi¬
des. Cf. Stenzel, Pauly-Wiss., XI, 660-61; Fritzsche, Aristoph. Ranae, pp.
318 ff.

Never submits his own opinions to criticism: Rep. 337 A, 338 B; Xen. Mem.
IV. 4. 9.

408 D, 410 B Invaluable in protreptic: Cf. on Euthyd. 27$ A. Cf. Xen.
Mem. I. 4. J,7rpOTpe\paa0aL pev avOpdoTrovs. Cic. Defin. 1. 1, “Plura suscepi veri-
tus ne movere hominum studia viderer, retinere non posse.”

Exhortation: Cf. 407 A ff. and the summary of Socrates’ moral teaching
there and throughout, e.g., injustice involuntary (407 D); a fortiori argument
from body to soul (407 E, 408 E, 410 D), cf. Charm. 154 E and Rep. 445 ABi
virtue and the arts or the political art and other arts (407 C, 409 B ff.), cf.
on Apol. 25 B; the dependence of all values on right use (407 E ff.), cf. on
Euthyd. 280 E; opovoi a (409 E) cf. Rep. 351 D 5, 432 A 7> Alc- 1 126-27, Po-
lit. 31 1 B 9, Xen. Mem. IV. 4. 16. bpo8o£La (409 E), cf. Rep. 433 C, Polit.
310 E.

The literature of discussion: It is cited by Souilhe, XIII, Part II, 169 ff.
He argues that the dialogue which may well be by Plato is a clever pastiche
and delicate parody of the style of contemporary sophists and rhetoricians.
He thinks Ritter’s objection that the thought is that of the earlier dialogues,
the style that of the later, rests on insufficient evidence. Cf. further Fried-
lander (II, 50) who thinks that since the Cleitophon ignores the positive teach¬
ing of Rep. II-X it confirms the separate publication of the Thrasymachus.
Cf. Raeder on Pavlu {Berlin. Phil. JVoch., November 26, 1910, p. 1503), who
argues that the avoidance of hiatus proves it later than Rep. I, and thinks it

657

WHAT PLATO SAID

658

a school exercise. One of the theses which I maintained in taking my Doctor’s
degree at Munich in 1884 was “Der Platonische K/eitophon ist echt.” I doubt
it now.

First book of the Republic To the references already given add 400 C
with Rep. 336 D.

Likely to say: Cf. the slight inurbanity of 406 A. Plato would hardly have
made Socrates say that it was just to harm enemies and benefit friends
(410 A).

Too many reminiscences: Cf. in addition to those already given 408 B 5,
8iKa.<TTucr)v Kal Satauxrbvriv, with Rivals 137 D and Gorg. 464 B 8; 408 B with
Rep. 488; 408 C 4, ■Kpocstlxov 5r) tov vow, etc., with Euthyd. 283 A 2; 410 A 2,
cf. on Charm. 174 B, and for rots irpurots cf. Rep. 487 B 7.

MINOS

NOTES

The Mi?ios is generally rejected by modern scholars, except Grote, II,
92-97. The fullest discussion is that of Jos. Pavlu, Die Pseudo-Platonischen
Zwillingsdialoge , “Minos und HipparcK * (Progr. Wien, 1910). Cf. further
Taylor, pp. 538-41; J. Souilhe, Platon (Paris, 1930), XIII, Part II, “Dia¬
logues suspects/’ 75 ff.; Heidel, pp. 39-43; Grote, II, 71-97.

313 A What is law: Cf. Xen. Mem. 1. 1. 16; I. 2. 42-46; IV. 4. 13; Anaxim¬
enes, Spengel, Rhet. Graeci , I, 171; Hermogenes, ibid.y II, 289.

314 BC Just ordinary: This idiomatic use of ravra is missed by some in¬
terpreters.

314 BC Opinion of a state: The later definition of law as boyfia 7r6\ea)s—
cf. "Open 415 B 8, Laws 644 D 3 — is derived from the idea of Theaet. 167 C 4.
Cf. also Rep . 607 B 1 with 493 C 2, 493 A 6; [Demosth.] XXV. 16.

Herodotus: III. 38, with Dialexeis , Diels3, II, 335; H. Gomperz, Sophistik
und Rhetorik , p. 163.

Altering our laws: A hint of Aristophanic (cf. Acharn. 630-32) and Dan-
tesque (cf. Purg. VI in fine) satire on the legislation of democracy.

317 DE Worth: Perhaps an anticipation of the Stoic a£ta, but Souilhe,
p. 83, rejects Pavlu’s general thesis of Stoic influence.

320 C Talos: Cf. Frazer on Apollodorus I. 9. 26 (Loeb); Cook, Zeus} I,
718 ff.; Apollonius Argon. IV. 1639-93; Spenser, F.Q., V, 2, 20 ff., where as
Artegall’s aid in the enforcement of justice Talus overthrows the Bolshevist
giant.

320 D Hesiod: Unknown. But cf. Plutarch Theseus 16.

321 A Soul-seducing: Cf. Isoc. II. 49 and Phaedr. 271 CD.

320 DE Tribute: The bis eirra of Phaedo 58 A 11, and Bacchylides 16.

320 A Offend a poet: Cf. Dio Chrys. II. 13; Hamlet II. 2, “Will you see
the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are
the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were bet¬
ter have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

HIPPARCHUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eckert, W., Dialektischer Scherz in den friiheren Gesprdchen Platons , 46 ff.

Nurnb., 1907.

Friedlander, II, 117-27.

Grote, II, 71-97 (with Minos).

Heidel, pp. 43-46.

Hirsch, M., in Klio, XX (1926), 154 ff.

Pavlu, J., Die pseudo-plat. Zwillingsdialoge “Minos und Hipparch .” Progr.
Wien, 1910.

Souilhe, J., Bude Platon , XIII, Part II, “Dialogues suspects,” 45 ff.
Stallbaum-Fritzsche, Vol. VI, sec. ii, pp. 297 ff. Leipzig, 1885.

Taylor, pp. 534-36.

NOTES

The Hipparchus is included in the tetralogies of Thrasyllus, and Grote, II,
85, argues that the words of Aelian V.H. 82 do not imply rejection. It is not
included in the trilogies of Aristophanes and is today almost universally re¬
jected. The only scholars who incline to believe in its authenticity are Eckert,
pp. 46 ff, and Friedlander, II, 117-27, who, assigning it to the first part of
the fourth century, thinks that it may be one of the earliest works of Plato.

For a good resume of the whole question cf. Marga Hirsch, with literature
in n. 1, p. 155, and Souilhe, who argues that it cannot be later than the publi¬
cation of the history of Thucydides, who protests against a version of the
story of the Peisistratidae preserved for us only in this dialogue.

The style certainly: Cf., e.g., the consciously Gorgian style of 225 C 6 and
axnrep tl rjdLKrjpevos in 225 B 10 and Eryxias 395 A 2. The expression is a
mark of later rhetoric though found in Xenophon. Taylor (p. 534) does not
think the style un-Platonic. For the Platonic reminiscences cf. Souilhe, XIII,
Part II, 52.

True gain or Kepdos: Cf. Isoc. I. 21 ; Nicocles 50. Cf. Laws 949 A, Kepdos
Kara rrjv avd poiirivT]v 8o£av; Eurip. Medea 87; Hirzel, Themis , Dike und Ver-
wandtes , p. 203; Grote, II, 71; Zeller, Ar. Trans., II, 171-72.

Recite them e£ VTroiXrpf/ews: Cf. Andrew Lang, The World of Homer, pp. 270-
71, 286-87; Schmid-Stahlin, Griech. Lit.-Gesch. I, 1, p. 159, n. 5, p. 160; Bergk,
Gr. Lit.-Gesch., I, 499 f.; Bernhardy, Grundriss der gr. Lit., II, 74-75.

660

THEAGES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FrIEDLANDER, II, 147-55.

Grote, II, 98-110.

Heidel, pp. 53-56.

Janell, W., “Ueber die Echtheit und Abfassungszeit des Theages ,” Hermes ,
XXXVI (1901), 427-39.

Pavlu, J., “Der pseudoplatonische Dialog Theages ,” Studien , XXXI

(1909)) I3“37*

Souilhe, J., Bude Platon , XIII, Part II, 129 ff.

Stallbaum-Fritzsche, Vol. VI, sec. ii, pp. 224 ff. Leipzig, 1885.

Taylor, pp. 532-34.

NOTES

Certainly un-Platonic: The ancients accepted it. Modern critics reject it,
with the exception of Socher, Grote, and Friedlander. Cf. Class. Phil., XXVI
(1931), 106. Burnet’s text seems to treat it as genuine but his note on Apol.
19 E rejects it.

For Theages himself cf. Rep. 496 BC. In Apol . 33 E his brother is cited
as a witness to the morality of Socrates’ teaching.

121 CD Educate him: For the comparison with plants cf. Euthyph. 2 D;
Tim. 90 A 6; Rep. 377 A, 491 D, 497 B, 546 A 4; Laws 765 E; Pindar Nem .
VI. 15-20. Cf. Soph. Trach. 33.

121 D Studying with some sophist: Cf. Prot. 31 1 D, 316 C; Meno 92 AB;
Xen. Anah. II. 6. 16.

122 Sacred thing: Cf. schol. Hermann VI. 287; Ep. V. 321 C; Sisyph ., in¬
fra, p. 668; Epicharmus in Kaibel, Com. Graec.frag. 228; Blaydes on Aris-
toph. Amphiaraus, frag. 38; Xen. Anah. VI. 5. 4; Lucian Teacher of Orators 1;
Julian Ep. 52; Iamblichus V.P. 85; Zenobius Paroem . Cen. IV, Prov. 40;
Apostolius Paroem. IX. 19 E; Erasmus Adag. 2. 147.

122 E Education: Cf. Ale. I 106-7 ff., which is imitated throughout this
passage.

123 D Ruling men: Cf. Polit. 262 A ff. The distinction between the politi¬
cal art and the other arts is perhaps overelaborated. Cf. on Entity d. 291 B.

124 E Tyrant: Cf. on Menex. 234 AB. For /xiape cf. Charm. 161 B 8,
174 B 11.

126 A Willing: Cf. Laws 690 C, 832 C; Polit. 276 E, 291 E, 293 A; Xen.
Econ. XXL 12.

126 D Own sons: Cf. Prot. 319 DE; Meno 93 A ff.; Ale. I 118 DE. But
Janell, p. 437, says that the author of the Theages may have picked up the
idea elsewhere. Cf. Ar. Eth. 1180 b 30 ff.

127 B Charmides: Cf. Charm. 157 E; Eutliyd. 273 E; Phaedo 107 C.

661

662 WHAT PLATO SAID

127 B 3 Godsend: Cf. Charm . 1 57 C, and for the word cf. further Enthyd.
273 E, 295 A; Phaedo 107 C; Symp . 176 B; Gorg . 486 E, 489 C; Rep. 368 D;
Laws 932 A.

128 D-131 Divine voice: For the daimonion cf. on Euthyph. 3 B. Cf. Xen.
Mem. I. 1.4; Fricdlander, I, 40-42; and the excellent note of Souilhe, pp.
I3°“37, who traces the superstitious interpretation of the daimonion through
Xenophon’s Apology , the first Socratic letter, Cicero De divin. I. 54, Plutarch
De Genio Socratis , Maximus of Tyre XIV and XV.

With 130 D, kv rfj avrfj nbvov o’udq., cf. Ep. XIII. 360 AB and Symp.
175 CD.

RIVALS

NOTES

This dialogue is athetized by all modern Platonic scholars except Grote
and Burnet (who prints it in the second volume of his Platonis opera ) in
England, and Waddington in France (cf. Souilhe, pp. 107 ff.). Cf. Heidel,
pp. 49-53, and especially W. Werner’s dissertation, De Anterastis dialogo
Pseudoplatonico (Darmstadt, 1912). On pp. 3 ff. he gives a detailed account
of ancient and modern scholars’ opinion and treatment of the Rivals .

Encyclopaedic cultural acquaintance with everything: Ar. Eth. Nic. 1095 a I;
Met. 982 a 21; Teichmiiller, Der Begriff des ireiraLdevpkpos, Ar. Forsch. II, pp.

55

Nothing distinctly un-Platonic: advpeiv irpos t6p \6yov , 135 A 6, is perhaps
a bad variant for Prot. 332 A.

Un-Platonic inurbanity: 132 BC, 133 D, 134 A, vp yp&pai (but cf. Laches
196 D 9), 134 B, 134 C. Cf. Eryx ., infra > p. 664.

Excess of ideas .... derived from Plato: Cf. 132 B, 132 C, 133 A, 133 C,
134 A, 135 D, 136 B, 137 D, and notes passim . Cf. 133 A 6, aywPLap, with
Euthyd. 300 C 1; 133 D 8, p.a\a eipcovutobs, with Euthyd. 302 B 3; 134 B, r?c tOt]
tcl peipaKia Kai ereyeXaaep, with Euthyd. 300 D 5; 134 D 7 with Prot. 3 13 C 5-6.
132 A Dionysius: Said to have been Plato’s teacher (Diog. L. III. 4).
132 B Oenopides: He is credited with the discovery of the ecliptic. Cf.
Diels, Vorsokr.y § 29 (I3, 296-98).

132 B Meteorology: Things of the upper air. Cf. Apol. 18 B 7; Phaedr.
270 A 1; Aristoph. Clouds 228.

134 BC Not many exercises , but moderate: Cf. Ar. Eth. II. 1104 a 15; Isoc.
Demon. 14. Cf. Renan, Dialogues philo sophiques , p. 291, “Tous les grands
philosophes ont 6te de grands savants et les moments ou la philosophic a ete
une specialite ont ete des moments d’abaissement.”

135 A They are at a loss: For the transition advpeiv irpos top \6yop , 135
A 6, cf. Prot. 335 A 9, 332 A 2-3.

135 B All arts: Cf. 136 B. Cf. Euthyd. 305 D 7-8. Cf. Gorg. 485 A,
487 C, on study of philosophy.

135 C For one man to master two arts: Cf. on Charm. 161 E and Rep.
395 B (Loeb).

135 D Contribute his advice: Cf. Laws 905 C 3; Gorg. 486 A 2; Polit.
298 C. Cf. Pind. Pyth. II. 81.

135 E The all-round man resembles the pentathlete: Cf. Ar. Eth. Nic. 1095
a i; Prot. 312 AB; Ar. Rhet. 1361 b 26, 1361 b 10. Cf. Longinus 34.

137 B Banausic arts: Cf. Rep. 495 E, 522 B, 590 C; Symp. 203 A; Theaet .
176 CD; Ale. 1 131 B; Epin. 976 D; Ep. VII. 334 B. Cf. Laws 644 A, 741 E,
743 D; Axioch. 368 B; Xen. Oecon. IV. 2, IV. 3; Ar. Pol. 1337 b 8. For kvtttIl-
kovTa (137B3) cf. Rep. 586 A, 469D. Cf. Ar. Lysist. 17, Clouds 509, Peace 731.

138 B Different aspects: Note g. Cf. Ale . 1 1 1 5 E-i 1 6 A and index s.v. $ua.

663

ERYXIAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heidel, pp. 59-61.

Schroll, O., De “ Eryxia ” qui fertur Platonis. Diss., Gotting., 1901.
Souilhe, J., Bude Platon, XIII, Part III, “Dialogues apocryphes,” 79 ff.

NOTES

Inurbanities: Cf. 397 C; 395 A, adLKov/ievos, cf. Hipparch. 225 B 10;
397 C 2 Tvirreiv; 403 C.

Platonic reminiscences: Cf. 393 A, 393 C, 393 E, 394 A, 395 A, 395 B,
396 CD, 396 E 7, 397 C, 398 C, 399 D, 401 BC, 401-2, 403 B, 404 A, 405 A,
405 CD, 405 DE; also 392 D 10, avayopevov, with Charm . 155 D I; 398 E 4 ff.,
prayer, with Ale . II 138; 396 E 6 with Cratyl. 386 AB.

Later usage and terminology: 401 E 13, to \oyL8i.ov , 403 B Stoic? and for
Aristotle cf. on 399 A, 404 C, and the perhaps doubtful expressions, eviropov
yv&vai, 405 D 3, and the confusion of 395 B.

Influence on Ruskin alone: Cf. A. E. Trevor’s Chicago dissertation, A His¬
tory of Greek Economic Thought (Chicago, 1916), pp. 17, 103, 132, 133-37;
Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought , p. 292 (Hobson), “A little book on
John Ruskin in 1898 may be supposed to have brought to a head the rising
dissent to prevailing types of economic theory which the nature of his early
work had engendered.”

Wise man the rich man: It is also an anticipation of the Stoic doctrine that
the sage only is rich. Cf. Souilhe, p. 86. It has been conjectured that the whole
is an Academic criticism of Stoic paradoxes.

False and true values: Homan, op. cit ., p. 345, “What is wanted to reform
economic science is, Hobson thinks, a calculus of ‘human costs’ and ‘human
utility’ against which to check ‘economic costs’ and ‘economic utility.’ ”
Ibid. , p. 353, “Hobson’s analysis of consumption is thus in the nature of a
diatribe against present standards.” Ibid., p. 26, “The distinction between
higher and lower wants might be expected to raise some question as to the
possibility of reducing these qualitative differences in utilities to a common
quantitative measure, but this difficulty is not faced.” Ibid., p. 32, “The no¬
tion that psychology has any important relation to economics .... is a very
modern notion. Rice, Methods in Social Science, p. 69, “Some terminology
should be adopted which would clearly separate these notions, all fundamental
to economic discussion yet so different, and all so confused as to be fatal to
accuracy of thought.”

392 A Eryxias: Nephew of Pheax (Thucyd. V. 4), known only from this
dialogue; a relative of Critias (396 D).

392 B From Sicily: The dramatic date then is before the Sicilian expedi¬
tion in 415.

664

ERYXIAS— NOTES 665

392 BC A wasp's nest: Is it the first time this figure is found? Or is it
only a development of Homeric figures? Cf. II. XII. 167, XVI. 259.

393 C Health: Cf. Gorg. 451 E; Rep. 591 C (Loeb). On the “goods” cf.
on Laws 697 B.

393 E Happiness: Cf. Charm. 173; Symp. 205 A; Euthyd. 281 B; Ar.
Eth. Nic. 1095 A 17.

394 A Wisdom is wealth: Cf. 395 D 4; Stoic? But cf. Phaedr. 279 C 1.

395 B Game of draughts: Cf. Rep. 487 BC. Overlooking this imitation
Souilhe finds in ovbkv tl fxaWoUj Rep. 487 C 3, a reference to the formula of
Pyrrho ov /jlclWov, etc.

395 C Are worth what you have: Cf. Horace Sat. I. 1. 62, “Quia tanti quan¬
tum habeas sis.”

396 E-397 A By the arguments of the “Euthydemus” : Cf. Euthyd. 280-82.
But the Eryxias follows this up, 399 E-403 AB, with the argument that it is
not wealth, “economic” goods, xPWaTa unless rightly used. The Euthydemus
has the idea but does not use the word xPWaTa- Cf. on 399 E.

398 C Learn from teachers: Cf. on Laches 186 B. Cf. Ale . I 106 D 8;
Xen. Mem. IV. 2. 3 ff.

399 A Esteem of the audience for the speaker: Cf. Ar. Rhet . 1377 b, rjdos.
399 E Utilities: For xPWaTa cf. Xen. Oecon. I. 8 and I. 9; Isoc. To De¬
mon. 28; Shorey in Class. Phil., VI, 477-78.

401 E Money that procures them: Cf. Ananius, A nth. Lyr. I. 286.

402 DE What the body needs: Cf. Phaedo 66 CD; Xen. Oecon. I. 13. Cf.
Souilhe, p. 107.

404 C A sine qua non of teaching: Cf. Ar. De sens. 437 a 5-15.

404 E-405 A Ill-gotten gains . ... be utilities: Cf. the idea of Buhver’s
Eugene Aram.

405 DE The lack of something: Cf. Phileb. 44 E ff.; Gorg . 493-95; Xen.
Oecon. II. 4 ff.

406 Are in the worst condition: Cf. Rep. 577 E-578 A on tyrant’s 7reWa.

AXIOCHUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brinkmann, A., “Beitrage zur Kritik und Erkl. des Dialog. Ax.” Rhein .
Mus.y LI (1896), 441-54.

Chevalier, J., Etude critique du dial, ps.-plat. I”* Ax.” Paris, 1915.
Feddersen, PI., Ueber den pseudoplat. Dial. “A.” Progr. Cuxhav, 1895.
Heidel, pp. 16-18.

Immisch, O., Philol. Studien zu Plato , I: ltAxiochus .” Leipzig, 1896.
Meister, M. De “Axiocho” dialogo. Diss., Breslau, 1915.

SOUILHE, pp. 1 17 fF.

NOTES

By its vocabulary: Cf. Souilhe, p. 225, n. 4; Meister, p. 32.

Literature of consolations: Cf. Buresch, “Consolationum a Graecis Ro-
manisque Scriptarum historia critica,” Leipziger Studien , IX (1886-87), 3~i6 4.
Cf. Menex. 236 E. Cf. Souilhe, XIII, 121, 126, 127, and Meister, who says
that the style and the matter are mainly derived from Posidonius. Immisch
thinks that the dialogue was composed by a member of the Academy against
Epicurus at the end of the fourth century. This opinion is shared by Taylor,
Mindy XXI (1912), 370. Chevalier finds that the language, which he examined
in detail, is on the whole late, and thinks that the dialogue was written under
the influence of neo-Pythagorean ideas not before the beginning of the first
century b.c. On this last point a similar opinion is expressed by Souilhe,
P- *35-

364 A-C CleiniaSy the son of Axiochus: Cf. Euthyd. 275 AB, where Cleini-
as is said to be the son of Axiochus, the grandson of Alcibiades the elder, and
a cousin of the famous Alcibiades. Cf. also Euthyd. 271 B, 273 A, 274 B.

365 B But a sojourn: Cf. Fitzgerald, Omar Khayydm , XVII, “Think, in
this battered caravanserai / Whose portals are alternate night and day.” Cf.
Hipparch. apud Stob. 108.81, Wachsmuth, Vol. V, 980; Polyb. IV. 42; I Pet.
1:17, Tapouda, and Gen. 23:4, where Abraham says he is a irapoLKos and
TrapejridTjpos.

Lucretius: III. 881. Cf. Epicurus in Diog. L. X. 124-25. It is perhaps
overingenious to argue from this use of Epicurean commonplace that the
development of the consolation from the Platonic immortality must be by
another hand.

365 D Attribute our own sensations to the corpse: Cf. Lucian De luctu 14;
Dio Chrys. VI. 42.

365 E You will not be there: Cf. 369 C. The Renaissance scholar, Dolet,
was condemned to death, or so the story goes, for translating this “Quand
vous ne serez rien de tout.” Cf. Lucret. III. 838, “Sic, ubi non erimus.”

365 E W e are not the earthy body but the soul: Cf. on Ale . I 130 C 3.

666

AXIOCHUS— NOTES 667

366 A Shut in a mortal prison: Cf. Phaedo 82-83; Cratyl. 400 C; Phaedr.
250 C; Gorg. 493 A.

366 DE Oppress the child: For this motif cf. Lysis 208-9; Epin. 973 D;
Cebes Tab. XIII; Teles, Stob. Flor. Ill, p. 234; Cic. Tusc. I. 116; Crates
apud Mullach II. 341. Cf. George Herbert,

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round 1
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, etc.,

with Prot. 325 C-326 D. For the youth hesitating at the crossroads of life
cf. on Rep. 365 AB.

367 B To second childhood: Cf. Laws 646 A 4; Aristoph. Clouds 1417; Hor¬
ace Ep. II. 2. 55, “Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes”; Shakespeare,
As You Like Z/, II, 7,

Last scene of all

That ends this strange eventful history
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Autocrat, VII.

367 C Favorites oj the gods die young: Cf. Herod. I. 31; Menander (Koch,
III, 36), frag. 125, dv oi deol $ iKomiv curoOvfjaKeL veos; Hypsaeus, Stob. Flor.
Meinecke, IV, 103; Kaibel, No. 340; Plautus Bacch. IV. 7. 18; Erasmus
Adagia , “Nil inveniendum”; Wordsworth, Excursion , “The good die first,
etc.”; Schiller, Der Ring des Polykrates , XI; Byron, Childe Harold , IV, 102;
Bon Juan , IV, 12; William Watson, “He loved them and in recompense sub¬
lime / The gods, alas! gave him their fatal love”; R. L. Stevenson, Virginibus
puerisque ( Aes Triplex). Shakes., Richard III, III, 1, “So wise, so young, they
say do never live long,” and similar passages are rather threats.

368 D Ungrateful democracies: Cf. Gorg. 519 B and on 516 DE, and for
the affair of the generals to which he refers cf. on Apol. 32 B and Gorg. 474 A.

370 C All the centuries to come: For this rhetorical use of the word alwv
cf. Longinus XIV. 3; Epict. II. 8. 20; Isoc. Panegyr. 28, 46, Archidajn. 109,
Bern. 1, Peace 34, Helena 62; Eurip. Heraclid. 900, aiwv re Kpbvov 7rats; Wila-
mowitz on Eurip. Here. Fur. II. 179 ff.; Tennyson, “Before the stony face of
Time.” Cf. also on Tim . 37 D, time the image of eternity.

370 D Conte?nplate nature and truth: Cf. Seneca Cons, ad Marciam XXV-
XXVI.

Cicero's “ Tusculans ”: Cf., e.g., I. 116; HI. 34, 81. Cf. 365 A and Eurip.
Cresphontes with Cic. Tusc. I. 48; Souilhe, p. 143.

By Rodolphus Agricola: Antwerp, 1511. Cf. also Tudor Translations. Cf.
Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca (4th ed.), Ill, 108-9.

SISYPHUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heidel, pp. 24-27.

Souilhe, J., Bude Platon, XIII, Part III, “Dialogues apocryphes,” 57 fF.

NOTES

Deliberation or counsel: Cf. Laches 185 CD; Ale . I 106 C; Ep. VII. 330
C fF.; schol. on Theages 122 B; Isoc. I. 34 f., II. 42-43, VIII. 8; Ar. Eth. Nic.
Ill 2, VI 6-9, RJiet. I. iv and the ancient Commentators on these passages;
Dio Chrysostom Or. XXVI; Eusebius Praep. evang. VI. 9; and the lost dia¬
logues on deliberation catalogued in Diog. L., e.g., V. 24, II. 123, and II. 84.

387 C Pharsalus: Taylor (p. 547, n. 2) asks whether Socrates was sup¬
posed to be in Thessaly, or the “government offices” of Pharsalus in Athens.
391 AB An archer: Cf. Laws 934 B 4, 961 E, 962 D.

Mark: Cf. Class. Phil., IX, 362-63.

391 AB The uncertainty oj the future: Cf. Demodocus 382 and Pind. 01.
XII. 7 fF.; Xen. Cyr. III. 2. 15; Isoc. XIII. 2, VIII. 8; Demosth. Exord. XXV.

DEMODOCUS

NOTES

On the Demodocus cf. Heidel, Ps.-PL, pp. 22-24, and J. Souilhe, Platon
(Bude), XIII, Part III, 37 fF.

Beginning of the fourth: Cf. Diels, § 83 (II3, 334 fF.), on ScaaoL Xoyoi.

382 E ff. Till you have heard both sides: Cf. Pseudo-Phocyll. 87; Anth.
Lyr. I. 200 (Diehl). Cf. Leutsch-Schneidewin, II, 759; Blaydes on Aristoph.
Wasps 725; Lucian Cal. 8; schol. on Thucyd. I. 44; schol. on Eurip. Hippol.
264.

384 A Made plain the truth: The Stoics maintained this paradox. Cf. Plu¬
tarch De Stoic, repugn. 1034 E.

384 B Is defeated by him: Cf. Shorey, Recent Platonism, p. 289, and Wil.,
II, 226, on Parmen . 133 C 1.

668

PERI DIKAIOU

NOTES

Cf. J. Pavlu, Die pseudoplatonischen Gesprdche uber Gerechtigkeit und Tu-
gend (Progr. Wien, 1913); Heidel, pp. 2-21 ; Souilhe, pp. 7 ff.

Is willingly bad: tt ovrjpos, here understood as “bad,” meant in the poet’s
line “wretched,” as the antithesis shows.

For the idea cf. on Laws 860 D and Phileb. 20 D.

PERI ARETES

NOTES

Cf. J. Pavlu, op. cit .; Heidel, pp. 21-22; J. Souilhe, XIII, Part III, 23 ff.
Imitations of the “ Meno ” and the “ Protagoras Cf. e.g., 376 D 2; 376 D 12;
it doesn’t pay anyone to live among bad men; cf. Prot. 327 B and Apol . 25 E.
377 B: Themistocles taught his son; cf. Meno 93 DE.

377 D: Pericles; cf. Meno 94 B.

379 B 1 : cf. Meno 89 B.

379 D 10: cf. Meno 99 E.

DEFINITIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, R., Satura Berolinensis , pp. 3-20. Berlin, 1924.

- , “Ueber eine unter Platos Namen erhaltene Sammlung von Defini-

tionen,” Philologus , LXXX (1925), 366-76.

Mutschmann, H., “Vergessenes und Uebersehenes,” Berl. philol. Wochen -
schr., XXVIII (1908), 1328.

NOTES

From various sources: Cf. Rudolf Adam, Philologus , LXXX, 366-76. Mil¬
ler’s translation of Plato is said to be the only one that includes them.

669

HALCYON

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brinkmann, A., Quaestionum de dialogis PI. /also adscripts spec. Diss., Bonn,
1891.

Heidel, pp. 1 8-20.

NOTES

The Halcyon is not contained in any of the extant Plato MSS. It is in¬
cluded in most of the editions of Lucian's works although it is generally con¬
sidered spurious (cf. Christ-Schmid-Stahlin, Gesch. d. gr. Lit.y II. Teil, II.
Halfte [1924], p. 738). Athenaeus , XI, 50 6c, attributes it to Leo the Acade¬
mician according to Nicias of Nicaea. In Diog. L. III. 62. it is given to a cer¬
tain Leo on the authority of Phavorinus. This makes Taylor {Plato, p. 552)
think that it was written by some Atticist before Lucian. Cf. Fabricius, Bibl.
Graeca , IIP, 108, and especially Brinkmann, pp. 7 ff.

Xanthippe and Myrto: The earliest mention of Myrto as wife of Socrates
is in Pseudo-Aristotle 7 repl evyevelas (frag. 84, 1490 b 8 ff.) according to the
testimony of Diog. L. II. 26 (who, however, does not mention the 7 repl evye-
veias) ; Plut. Vit. Aristd. 27; and Athen., XIII, 555^. Cf. H. Maier, Sokrates ,
p. 81, n. 1, and Zeller’s exhaustive note, Philos, d. Gr., II, I4, 54, n. 2.

670

INDEXES

INDEX OF NAMES

[Names included in the general and special bibliographies are not usually repeated
here.]

Acheron, 1 8 1

Achilles, 84, 87-88, 89, 190
Acropolis, 158, 352
Adams, Henry, 394

Adeimantus, 1, 5, 208, 215 ff., 287, 558

Adonis, 206, 556

Adrasteia, 201

Aeacus, 153

Aegospotami, 5

Aeschines, 169

Aeschylus, 8, 10, 164

Aesculapius, 184

Aeson, 163

Aesop, 170

Agathon, 189, 190, 197
Agamemnon, 256
Ajax, 256
Akoumenos, 198
Alcestis, 190

Alcibiades, 6, 7, 19, 22, 23, 119, 126-27,
142, 1 51, 196-97,415 ff.

Alcidamas, 545

Alline, 60

Ammon, 421

Amphion, 143, 431

Amphipolis, 82

Amy n tor, 400

Anacharsis, 249

Anacreon, 8, 199, 429

Anaxagoras, 10, 12, 82, 91, 178, 205, 262,

345, 555. 569

Anaximander, 11
Anaximenes, 12
Anniceris, 1
Antimoeros, 120
Antiphon, 1, 186, 287
Antisthenes, 28, 37-40, 169, 273, 450,
576, 582

Anytus, 158, 516
Apatouria, 331
Apelt, 307
Aphrodite, 191

Apology: historicity of, 461 ; philosophic
content of, 465-66; the Xenophontic,
462

Apollo, 166, 170, 174, 222, 522
Apollodorus, 18, 169, 183, 189
Apuleius, 547
Arcadian Union, 192, 545
Archelaus, 139, 153, 420, 504
Archilochus, 8
Archytas, 7, 43, 44, 48
Ardiaeus, 252

Arginusae, 5, 82; the generals of, 464
Argives, 175
Aristippus, 169, 524
Aristodemus, 189, 197, 542
Aristodorus, 48
Ariston, 1, 245

Aristophanes, 7, 8, 10, 18, 23-24, 28, 99,
189, 191, 197

Aristophanes of Byzantium, 60, 453
Aristoteles, 287

Aristotle, 30, 77, 89, 93, 104, 124, 217, 219,

290, 295» 355“56, 428, 474, 494, 498,
512, 517, 521, 522, 524, 528, 529, 532,

533, 534, 547, 551, 56i» 563, 568, 576,
579, 58o> 582, 586> 587, 592, 594, 599,
614, 615, 624, 625, 626, 627, 634, 636,
640, 649-50
Arnim, von, 67

Arnold, Matthew, 34, 82, 178, 268, 277,
279> 395, 535, 548, 56°, 591, 592, 59 3,
594, 643, 644
Asclepieia, 96
Aspasia, 186, 188, 539
Aster, 17
Astyanax, 261
Atalanta, 256

Athene, 122, 166, 186, 312, 351 ; thepeplos
of, 457

Athens; see General Index, s.v .

Atlantis, 331-32, 350 ff., 620
Atrcus, 310
Atropos, 253, 257, 647

673

674

WHAT PLATO SAID

Attica, 9, 352
Axiochus, 437-38

Bacon, 394, 638, 644
Bagehot, 496
Basile, 100, 478
Bendis, 208
Bentham, 326
Berkeley, 575, 617
Boccaccio, 553

Boethius, 139, 504, 515, 528, 547, 552

Boreas, 198

Brasidas, 197

Browning, Robert, 527

Browning, Mrs., 552, 632, 616

Bruneti£re, 642

Bruni, Leonardo, 41

Buckle, 563

Burke, 220, 507, 509, 553
Burton, 563

Cadmean victory, 361

Callias, 119, 120, 492

Callicles, 55, 78, 133, 136, i4off., 151

Carian, 520

Carthaginians, 366, 434
Cebes, 49, 84, 116, 169, 170, 174
Cecrops, 35

Cephalus, 208-9; another, 287
Chaerephon, 18, 100, 133, 444, 478
Chaignet, 58
Charmantides, 208
Charmides, 1, 5, 23, 100 ff., 120
Chaucer, 613, 626
Chimaera, 550
Christian Fathers, 218, 615
Cicero, 29, 34, 51, 509, 510, 530, 532, 533,
S69, 572> 592> S94. 6°7. 613, 617, 621,
624, 625, 626, 629, 639, 644, 650, 657
Cimon, 147, 150, 151, 429
Cleitophon, 208, 422, 657
Cleinias, 161 f., 437, 666
Cleombrotus, 169, 524
Clito, 353
Clotho, 253, 257
Cocytus, 181-82
Codrus, i
Coleridge, 555
Connus, 186, 539
Corinth, battle of, 572
Corinthian War, 6

Coriscus, 48
Corneille, 99

Corybants, 85, 161, 381, 469
Cousin, 453
Cowley, 487
Cratylus, 1, 260 ff.

Crete and the Cretans, 245, 359, 361, 364,
365, 366, 426

Critias, 1, 5, 23, 100, 101, 103, 127, 330,
433 ?•

Crito, 84, 164, 167, 169, 183-84
Critobulus, 169
Croce, 555

Cronos, 152, 310-1 1, 371
Ctesippus, 1 13, 162 f., 169
Cyclopes, 367
Cydias, 8, 101

Daedalus, 77, 78, 159, 516
Damon, 107, hi, 483
Danaids, 507
Dante, 491
Deceleia, 4

Delium, 82, 107, 197, 484
Delos, 84, 524

Delphi, 1 13, 199, 200, 238, 377, 399, 634
Democritus, n, 31, 338, 340, 345, 347
Demodocus, 429-30

Demos (son of Pyrilampes), 142, 150, 505
Dickens, 99, 458
Diogenes (the Cynic), 37
Diogenes Laertius, 2, 670
Dion, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48
Dionysius (the elder), 1, 42
Dionysius (the younger), 2, 42, 43, 44, 46-
48, 49

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 51
Dionysodorus, 160 ff.

Dionysus, 366
Diotima, 56, 194 f., 546
Dodona, 200
Donne, 519
Dorians, 367-68
Dreiser, 141
Drinkwater, 546
Dropides, 331
Diimmler, 214-15
Dunning, 359

Echecrates, 169, 175

Egypt, 9, 25, 173, 331, 363, 376, 382, 403

INDEXES

675

Eleatics, 12, 278, 300; Eleatic stranger,

294 ff-

Eliot, George, 500, 562
Ellis, Havelock, 88, 91
Emerson, 52-53, 56, 57, 251, 394, 395, 510,

513» 527. 529> 545. 548, 55°. 555. 5^3.
574. 586, 593. 605, 61 1, 613, 639, 643,
644, 645, 655

Empedocles, 156, 300, 340, 345, 439, 533,
57°

Epeius, 256
Epicharmus, 8, 448
Epictetus, 22, 525
Epigenes, 169
Epimetheus, 121-22
Er, 251 f.

Erasistratos, 433

Erastus, 48

Erechtheus, 351

Erichthonius, 351

Eriphyle, 247

Eryxias, 433 f., 664

Eryximachus, 190, 191, 197, 543, 544

Euclides, 26, 27, 169, 269, 572

Eudicus, 87, 92

Eudoxus, 318

Euphraeus, 48

Eupolis, 493

Euripides, 8, 9, 10, 16, 143, 244, 421, 506,

545. 546

Euthydemus, 260; the Eu thy demus, 14, 34
Euthydemus, brother of Polemarchus, 208
Euthyphro, 74 ff.

Evenus, 81, 97, 170, 463, 524

Ficino, 493, 552
Fontenclle, 531

Galen, 177
Galsworthy, 520
Glaucon, 1, 5, 208, 215 ff., 287
Glaucus (sea-god), 250
Goethe, 96, 526, 540, 552
Gomperz, 26, 392, 405
Gorgias, 13, 54, 87, 91, 133 ff., 155, 325;
the Gorgias , 28

Grote, 15, 58, 65, 71, 307, 308, 315, 328,
347-48, 392> 5°8
Gyges, 559

I-Iadcs, 396, 397

Hale, Edward Everett, 520

Hazlitt, 538
Hector, 261
Hegel, 287
Helen, 246
Helicon, 49
Helots, 379

Hephaestus, 122, 186, 312, 351
Heracles, 166, 276
Heraclides, 44

Heraclitus, 10, 12, 93, 191, 195, 224, 262,
267,271,278, 300,384
Hermeias, 48
Hermes, 122
Hermocrates, 330
Hermogenes, 169, 260 f.

Herodicus, 493

Herodotus, 8, 9, 124, 351, 354, 426, 447,
53'

Hesiod, 8, 103, 218, 251, 271, 286, 369,
372, 426, 427, 489
Hestia, 201, 262, 569
Hipparchus, 428

Hippias, 13, 15, 55, 86-89, 91-95, 121,
127, 470

Hippocrates, 119, 205, 555
Hippothales, 113

Hobbes, 517, 533, 546, 563, 574, 575, 608,
617, 631, 637
Hoffman, 67
Holmes, 555, 567, 653
Homer, 7, 9, 87-88, 89, 96, 159, 192, 193,
220, 229, 248-50, 261, 367, 379, 383,
426, 428, 628; banishment of, 218-19,
561-62; censorship of, 75, 457; knows
everything, 477; recited vjroXrjrl/ecos,
660

Hooker, 499

Horace, 543, 624, 665, 667
Huxley, 496, 5'6. 559. 57°. 611
Huxley, Aldous, 141, 555

Ibycus, 8
Ilissus, 198, 550
Inge, 484, 510
Iolaus, 175, 521
Ion, 55, 96
Iris, 271

Ismenias, 210, 558

Isocrates, 13, 30, 32-35, 167-68, 207, 356,
428,450, 485,503,522, 538

676

WHAT PLATO SAID

Jaeger, 649-50

James, 283, 500, 530, 564, 575, 634
Johnson, 419, 564, 624
Jonson, Ben, 554
Jowett, 51,344, 57°

Juvenal, 97, 41 9, 632, 656

Kant, 234, 278-79, 282, 528
Keats, 394

Laches, 106 ff., 197
Lachesis, 253, 257
LaFontaine, 475
Lampros, 186, 539
Larissa, 159

LaRochefoucauld, 137, 637
Laws , the, 50-51 ; plot of, 357 ff., 360, 370,
388; and the Republic , 357 ff., 647
Leochares, 49
Leodamas, 48
Leon of Salamis, 5, 82
Leptines, 49
Lethe, 257
Lincoln, 520
Livy, 562

Lowell, 529, 548, 554
Lucian, 7, 355, 444, 670
Lucretius, 527, 533, 536, 576, 610, 628,
636, 642, 666
Luther, 532

Lyceum, 113, 160, 166, 197, 434, 487
Lycurgus, 249

Lysias, 5, 31-32, 198 (., 203 f., 208
Lysimachus, 106
Lysis, 1 13 ff.

Macaulay, 4, 220, 547, 623
Malebranche, 283
Mandeville, 137, 520, 527
Marathon, 370
Mark Twain, 99
Marsyas, 163, 196
Medea, 163

Megara, 1, 26, 27, 85, 449; battle of, 5

Megillus, 358, 362

Melesias, 106

Meletus, 74, 81, 456

Melos, 6

Menexenus, 114-18, 169, 185, 488; the
Menexenusy 28, 344-45
Meno, 55, 155 ff., 51 1

Meredith, G., 531
Meyer, Edward, 40
Midas, epitaph of, 204, 554
Mikkos, 1 13

Mill, J. S., 155, 347, 405, 530, 531, 538,

.575. 587> 643
Miltiades, 147, 150, 509
Milton, 2, 506, 509, 510, 515, 524, 528,

544. 547. 548, 552. 562» 578> 6 '5. 629,
.634, 639
Minos, 153, 425 f.

Minucius Felix, 551
Mithaikos, 1 50
Montaigne, 438, 505

More, Henry, 507, 517, 528, 532, 552, 617

Morley, J., 531

Musaeus, 21 5

Muses, 199, 238, 280

Myrto, 444, 670

Nemea, 1 14
Nicias, 106 ff.

Ocean, 181, 271
Odysseus, 87, 89, 256, 532
Oedipus, 400, 420-21
Olympia, 88
Olympiodorus, 560
Oreithyia, 198, 550
Oropus, 352

Orpheus, 190, 215, 251, 2.56
Ovid, 540, 626, 644

Pan, 207

Panathenaea, 75, 96, 457-58
Panope, 113,487
Paralus, 120

Parmenides, 63, 177,278,287 ff.,300, 584;
the Parmenides , 63-64, 1 1 5 ; agree¬
ment of the Parmenides and the Soph-

isty 586

Pater, 522, 524, 532
Patroclcs, 521
Patroclus, 402
Pausanias, 543
Payne, Thomas, 560
Peace of Nicias, 4
Peiraeus, 4, 5, 149, 208
Peloponnesian War, 4
Penelope, 174
Penia, 194

INDEXES

677

Perdiccas, 48, 210

Pericles, 135, 147, I5°> lSl> !97> 2°4~5»
417, 4^9> 5°9» 555
Perictione, 1
Perioeci, 239
Persia, 369, 417, 654
Persian War, 369
Persius, 41 9
Phaedo, 169, 175
Phaedrus, 190, 197, 198 ff.

Phaidondas, 169
Pherecrates, 123
Phidias, 93

Philip of Opus, 355, 408
Philippides, 120
Philo, 624
Philolaus, 170, 525
Phlius, 169, 524
Phoenicia, 223, 376
Phrynichus, 427
Phthia, 84

Pico di Mirandola, 608
Pindar, 8, 10, 79, 143, 156, 157, 368, 483,
488, 506, 512, 513, 577
Pittacus, 128
Plataca, 370

Plato; see General Index, j.o.

Plautus, 524, 581
Plutarch, 7
Pohlenz, 67-68, 481
Polemarchus, 203, 208 ff.

Pollis, 1

Polus, 55, 97, 133-34, 1 36 ff-

Polycrates, 481

Pope, 487, 638, 643-44

Poros, 194

Poseidon, 353

Potidaea, 82, 100, 197

Pre-Socratics, 10, n, 91, 300, 347, 448,

593, fii4

Prodicus, 13, 15, 54,9I>99> io3> UI> I27>
1 6 1, 167, 249, 260, 309, 434, 437, 486,

5*9. 567

Prometheus, 121-22, 1 52, 312, 316, 510
Propertius, 501, 544

Protagoras, 3, 13, 15, 54, 91* H9ff->
249, 260, 271 ff., 494, 497, 573; the
Protagoras , 96
Protarchus, 317
Prytaneum, 82, 465
Pyrilampes, 1

Pyriphlegethon, 181-82

Pythagoras (and Pythagoreanism), 8, 51,

M3, H5>i69> 249, 525>612
Pythion, 139
Pythodorus, 287, 584

Rabelais, 506, 54 5, 553, 562, 564, 578
Renan, 394

Republic , thet 28, 169, 299, 356; minor
dialogues point to, 455; plot of, 141,
216, 225, 226, 245, 248, 251
Rhadamanthus, 153, 426, 427
Rossetti, 529
Rousseau, 218, 579, 636
Royce, 283

Ruskin, 25, 75, 219, 268, 354, 394-95*

433, 555, 625, 664
Russell, 141

Salamis, 370

Sappho, 8, 199

Sarambos, 151

Scamander, 251, 568

Schleicrmacher, 66, 566

Schopenhauer, 569

Scythians, no, 434

Selden, 556, 610

Seneca, 500, 509, 578, 592, 62 6

Sextus Empiricus, 552

Shakespeare, 25, 41 9, 438, 485, 507, 522

5l6, 527, 53i, 545, 55', 56o> 562, 575,
640, 645, 654, 659, 667
Shaw, G. B., 137, 141, 510, 531, 578, 653
Shelley, 96, 491, 526, 530, 545, 610
Sibyl, 200, 551

Sicily, 1 81, 433, 664-65; Sicilian cookery,
509; Sicilian expedition, 4
Sidney, 485
Sileni, 196

Simmias, 49, 84, 169, 174
Simonides, 8, 10, 128, 209, 499
Sisyphus, 439

Socrates, 1, 5, 6, 7, 18-24, 37-38, 53, 55,
77, 81-83, 84-85, 88, 100, 107, 1 12, 127,
156, 175, 183-84, 189, 196-97, 216,
231, 271, 3j7> 422> 448, 461 ff., 532>
537, 542; can speak only the truth,
474; complaints of, 88, 513; the dai-
monion, 456-57, 518, 662; expert only
in love, 478, 487; a poet (?), 525; his
brother Patroclcs, 521 ; military service

WHAT PLATO SAID

678

of, 82, 464; never gives his own opin¬
ion, 657; not a teacher, 457, 463, 466,
479; oracle concerning, 463; queer, 522;
Socratic non possumus , 504; tempera¬
ment of, 479; wants to finish the dis¬
cussion, 493

Solon, 8, 100, 109, 249, 331, 431
Sophists, 9, 12-16, 54, 70, 106, 109, hi,
131, 138, 141, 151, 158, 261, 296 ff.,
4 3°, 472-73» 448, 493; professions of,
519; the Sophist , 291
Sophocles, 8, 10, 545
Sophron, 8, 448
Sophroniscus, 107

Sparta 23, 85, 91-92, 107, 361, 364, 365,
366, 369, 384, 421, 426, 469, 627, 638;
Spartanomaniacs, 509
Spencer, H., 326
Spenser, E., 485, 493, 613
Speusippus, 2, 29
Spinoza, 491
Stephens, Leslie, 568
Stesileos, 108
Stesichorus, 200, 246
Styx, 181-82
Sunium, 84

Swinburne, 343-44, 394, 531, 548
Symposium , the, 45

Talos, 427, 659
Tartarus, 153, 181, 182, 252
Taurcas, 100
Teiresias, 159
Telephus, 501

Tennyson, n, 25, 190, 395, 489, 52 j, 526,

527, 53i, 536, 545, 547, 554, 579, 615,

624, 644
Terence, 485
Terpsion, 169, 269, 572
Tethys, 271

Thales, 91, 249, 275,394, 577
Thamous, 205
Thamyras, 256
Thaumas, 271

Theaetetus, 6, 269 ff., 590; the Theactetus,
2 6, 64

Theages, 429-30, 661; “the bridle of,’
229

Thcarion, 150
Thebes, 85

Themistocles, 135, 147, 429, 509
Theodorus, 269 ff., 485, 572
Theognis, 8, 158,359, 516
Theon of Smyrna, 47
Thersites, 256
Theseus, 400
Thespis, 427

Thessaly, 84, 85, 150, 155, 379
Theuth, 205, 555, 604
The Thirty 5, 82
Thrace, 223, 384
Thrasyllus, 61, 443, 453
Thrasymachus, 3, 55, 97, 137, 140, 208,
210 ff., 229; the Thrasymachus , a sepa¬
rate dialogue, 214-15, 499, 559 bis, 657
Thucydides, 3, 6, 8, 447, 660
Thyestes, 310

Timaeus, 330 ff., 61 1; the Timaeus , 51

Tisias, 205

Titans, 629

Trinity, 47

Tucker, 395

Tyrtaeus, 8, 359

Ueberweg-Praechter, 58

Voltaire, 546

Whitehead, 89

Wilamowitz, 2, 67, 277, 279, 508, 631
Wordsworth, 25, 219, 394, 531

Xanthippe 22, 169^70, 444, 524
Xanthippus, 120
Xenophon, 21, 35-37, 528, 540
Xerxes, 143, 210
Zamolxis, 101

Zeller, 58, 307, 308, 313, 570
Zeno, 287-88, 554, 584
Zethos, 143. 431

Zeus, 122, 152, 166, 209, 321, 349; Idaean,
358 ; 5pios, 387; £mos, 403

GENERAL INDEX

[There is no space for a completely analytic index, and the marginal references and
the notes would make it superfluous. This Index, it is believed, will be found practi¬
cally sufficient as a supplementary guide.]

Academy, i, 2, 27, 28-31, 113, 155, 449

Accident and essence, 77

Admonition, 591-92

Aether, 408

at rlay 606

aluv} 667

Allegory, 200, 218-19, 550, 552, 561
Anachronisms in Plato, 186, 496, 550, 572
Analogies: used to confirm argument,
17 3, 528; see also Confirmation
’A v&pvTjais, 159, 172, 202, 515
’AvaxupWi 529

Ancestry (makes no difference), 577”7^
Anger, value of, 224, 374, 564, 632
Anti-Platonism, 52, 348, 619; his “fanati¬
cism,” 463, 534, 642
"Antipov, 606
Arguing for victory, 481
Argument: personification of, 500; re¬
turns on itself, 482
Aristocracy, Athens an, 539
Art: and ethics, 623, 626, 627; the royal,
71, 521 ; see also Political art
’A pxcuov (old-fashioned), 626

’A pxv, 468

Astronomy, 262, 334, 335, 386, 410 ff.,
552, 614, 639, 649-50
Atheism, 392, 393
Atheists, dogmatism of, 392
Athens: and Athenian life, 4, 19, 25, 87,
100 ff., 106 ff., 1 13-14, ”8, 1 19, 139,
186, 187, 189-90, 196, 208, 223, 369-70,
384; centre of Greece, 499; praise of,
539, 540; produces intelligent men,
613; ungrateful, 509
Athletes, 220, 562

Athletics: should prepare for war, 640;

see Gymnastics
"AOpoiapa, 575

Attic courtesy, 165, 189, 506, 508
Audi alteram partem , 668
AvrapKtia , 470

Awe, 629, 642

" A(f>VKTOV , 5I9
Banausic, 663

Banter, 77, 113, 192, 196, 198, 199, 200,
308

Barbarians, 262, 310, 600
Beast: the great, 228; the many-headed,
247

Beauty: definition of, 93 ff., 219; and the
good, 326, 363, 626; idea of, 202; of the
world, 180
Bchaviorists, 581

Being: different meanings of, 605; abso¬
lute, 202; is, 289, 298, 302, 303; is
power, 301; and not-being, 227, 264,
174, 290, 298, 299 ff., 520, 564, 577,
588, 589, 592, 596-97
Blame yourself, 532
Blessed, islands of, 651
Body, servant of the mind, 496
Boutades, 639
Boy Scouts, 378, 635

Bravery, not fearlessness, 486; see also
Courage

Cataclysms, 627

Cause, 94, 179, 232> 32&;2I,333, 337. 346,
490, 608; and condition, 534; in phys¬
ics, 339-40
Cave, the, 234

Censure: of literature and art, 385, 623;

of mythology, 75, 218, 560-61, 623
Chance, 370, 630
Change deprecated, 623, 637
Chaos, pre-existent, 613, 617
Character, in dialogue, mouthpiece of
Plato, 586

Children, 384; hard lot of, 66 7
Christianity in Plato, 85, 149, 153, 172*
•75. >94, 247, 25°> 342> 397, 466, 467,

68o

WHAT PLATO SAID

468, 507, 510, 520, 526, 530, 537, 540,
547, 559, 601 ; city of God, 248

Chronology, 2, 27, 28, 33, 35, 58, 65, 79,
98, 146, 159, 185, 249, 259, 290, 293,
35°. 453. 499. 5°3. 5°5> 520 bis, 549.

551, 554, 566, 6lO-II, 620
Cicadas, myth of, 203
Civilization, origin of, 366-67, 495
Classification, 61, 643
Climate and national character, 563, 623
Climax beyond climax, 189, 546
Colloquialism, 486, 502, 528
Colonies, 630, 633

Comedians, 401, 527; on Socrates, 462
Comedy, 385; and tragedy, 197
Common sense, 302, 304; shift from ideal
to, 136, 211, 503
Communion of kinds, 595
Communism, 225, 560, 562, 564
Concept, 305; discovery of, 596; hypo-
statization of, 584-85
Confirmation, 327; see also Analogies
Conjectural philology, 3, 16, 21, 27, 39,
64, 65, 87, 185, 259, 273, 279, 318,
508, 516, 566
Consolations, 666
Contract, social, 354, 368, 469
Contracts, 193, 399, 545
Contradictions, alleged in Plato, 2 66, 468,

469, 5°3> 5°8 5IO> il6> 525> 5 36,

539, 547 563> 568, 58i> 62°> 621, 624

Copula, 307

Counsel, 43, 66 8; is sacred, 661
Courage, lowest of virtues, 624; see also
Bravery
Courts, 378

Creation out of nothing, 617
Criticism: literary, 203, 473, 554; terms

of. 477. 5 20

Culture, 205

Cycles, 11,311,331,352, 366

Death, 82-83, 152, 171, 437, 465; not to
be feared, 631

Definition, 92 ff., 134, 155 fF., 209, 270,
286, 294, 393, 455, 480, 512, 558, 582;
of being, 594; as an example, 485, 571,
591; first, 204, 214, 429, 431, 485, 551;
by genus and differentia, 78, m, 460,
486; instance in place of, 485; by isola¬
tion, 582; language of, 75-76, 573;

opopa, TrpayiJia} and X6yos, 648; as a
riddle, 480; of vague claims insisted
upon, 476

Delight in discussion, 493
Delphi, 377, 399
Demiourgos, 349

Democracy, 6, 32, 240 ff., 494; ingratitude
of, 151,667

Demons, 194, 546-47; higher doctrine of,
344, 536

Details, omitted, 221, 404, 635

Dens ex machina , 263, 569

Dialectics, 204, 206, 233, 236-37, 261, 303,

305, 325» 479, 5^2, 554, 568, 586, 6n,
648; and discussion, 56; does not cavil
on words, 516, 520 ; interlocutor

baffled by, 546; and law, 76, 497, 502,
520; premature dangerous, 23, 237,
463; method of, 135, 459, 481, 498,
499, 502; obscurities always explained
503; “one little difficulty” 470; in the
Laws , 405 ff.; in the Parmenides 584
Dialogues, 452; dialectical, 590; in dra¬
matic form, 572; form of, 63, 64; minor,
ideas common to, 69 ff.; purpose of,
63, 460; Socratic, 64 ff.; titles of, 453
Aiarpt/3as, 483

Dichotomy, 591, 599; see also Division

Dignity of object no matter, 585

Digressions, 640

Disease, 341-42

Aurcrop, 498

Divided line, 232 ff.

Divine (0eios), 99

Division (diairesis), 61, 204, 294 ff., 308,
554, 604; of labor, 86, 102, 217, 480,
623

Dreams, 84, 467, 524; dream that we
dream, 575

Earth, 335, 533, 61 5
Economics, 433-36, 664-65
Edification, 328

Education, 13, 106 ff., 206, 218 ff., 234-35,

237> 269> 362> 363, 36 4, 378> 38i> 384>
385, 637, 667; in the Academy, 30;
by beauty, 219; early, 560; the higher,
230 ff., 235 ff., in the Laws , 405 ff., 41 1 ;
importance of, 625, 638
Elections, 377, 402

INDEXES

681

Elements: the four, 337, 338, 494, 530;

construction of, 617-18
Envy, 201, 552
’E7T45ei£ts, 501-2
'EirijueXcta, 464

Epistles, 7, 40-50, 190, 45°~;5i> 537, 556
Equality, 241-42; geometrical, 148, 377,
634; before the law, 539; of property,
36®, 375

"Epyov (function), 210, 214, 477, 521
Eristic, 116, 176, 290, 489, 513, 587;

evasion of, 359, 624
'’Eppaiov (godsend), 662
Eros, 488

Error: must explain cause of, 97, 499-500;

problem of, 279 ff., 297, 580-81
Ethical nihilism, 6, 137, 141-42, *45,
215 ff., 392, 503, 519
Ethics, 373; autonomy of, 459; Plato’s
philosophy of, 317; popular, 209; sci¬
ence of, 246; sovereignty of, 364, 626
Etymology, 199, 259, 261, 565 ff., Cra-
ty lus , passim
Eu 7 rp&Treii', 482
Eugenics, 314
Evil, 276,312, 409, 578
Evolution, logic of, 494
*E$ Apxfc (first principles), 483
’E£a L(f)vrjs, the, 293
Exegetes, 635
Exercise, 381
Experience, value of, 647
Expert, 84, 104, 108, 277, 302, 484; he
who claims to be must name his teach¬
er, 484

Eye, sees not itself, 654
Eyes, 336

Faculty (Sfoapts or <f£is), 88-90
Faith, 632

Fallacies: alleged in Plato, 90, 136, 140,
I44, 148, 154, 160 ff., 172, 178, 21 1,
264, 272, 273, 289, 463, 471, 482, 487,

498. 5°4. 532> 576, 579. 608 ; of An-
tisthenes, 39; in the Euthy dermis ,
518 ff.; of being and not being, 520
Falsehood, when justified, 626
Fame, 195, 548
Flute girls, 543

Flux, 259, 263, 266, 374, 569, 570, 579
Freud, ideas of, 244

Friendly earnestness, 75, 457
Friends of ideas, 301, 588, 594
Friendship, Lysis , passim; only between
the good, 489

Future, uncertainty of, 66 8
Gain (*cep5os), 660

Game of question and answer, 213, 228
Generalization, 212, 341, 359, 361, 399;
of philosophical doctrines, 593; of
words, 204, 521, 544 bis , 630; see also
Induction

God, 289, 31 1, 371-72, 383, 418; alone
can tell, 625; author of good only, 561 ;
become like to, 578, 631; blameless,
254; careful of the whole, 644; ex¬
tended use of the word, 606; knowl¬
edge of particulars, 586; the measure,
631; never deceives or changes, 561
Gods: all things full of, 650; cannot be
bribed, 643; do not neglect details,
644; favorites of, die young, 66 7; the
twelve, 552; visible and invisible, 645,
650

Gold and silver, forbidden, 621, 633
Golden Age, 601 ; see also Simple life
Golden Rule, 645

Good, the, 139, 147, 274, 317, 318, 326,
420; all men desire, 513
Good, the idea of, 71, 72, 230 ff., 238, 534;

not God, 231; and the sun, 231
Goods, 135, 21 1, 359, 369, 502, 519, 629
Gorgian figures, 13, 86, 91, 472, 544
Government: aim of, 150, 418, 562, 630;

by consent, 624; mixed, 371, 629, 630
Governments, classification of, 314, 369,
602, 629

Grace divine, 72, 235, 517
Grammar, 307

Gymnastics, 361, 366; see also Athletics

Habit, makes things pleasant, 637
Happiness, 408, 41 1, 433, 507, 665
Harmony, 192, 563; with one’s self, 505;
the soul a, 176 ff.; of words and deeds,
no, 485
Health, 373

History, 187, 533; lessons of, 368; Plato’s
use of, 540
Homosexuality, 544
Hope, 619

682

WHAT PLATO SAID

Human nature, 641

Humor, 94, 108, 135, 137, 156, 173, 192,
193, 220, 260, 262, 273, 310, 343, 351,

352> 367, 372, 381, 399. 5°8> 5'3, 56°,
591, 603; laughs at himself, 295, 380,

535. 569

Hypothesis, 76, 157, 179, 266, 459, 473,

515

Ideals, 202; value of, 226
Ideas: and concepts, 226, 584-85; doc-
trine of, 32, 75-76, 92, 147, 166, 179,
195-96, 249, 261, 266, 267, 268, 288,
292> 335. 338, 406, 458, 473. 534, 535,
560, 570, 599, 601, 61 1, 613; innate,
172, 515; and mathematics, 528; not in
space and time, 486; and numbers,
604-5; and parts, 459, 600; vision of,
201; wealth of, in Plato, 10
Idolatry, 645

Ignorance, worst form of, 117, 194, 296,
368, 490, 547
Imitation, 219, 561

Immortality, 82, 177, 180, 195-96, 229,

2 5°. 372> 469. 535, 541, 547, 55', and
Phaedo , passim; subjective, 548
Imperialism, 28, 32, 146, 151
Importance of subject, 484
Incommensurability, 270, 386, 639
Induction, 88, 89, 102, 104, 212, 425, 470
Infinite series, 490
Infinity of past time, 627
Inspiration of poets, 98, 475; see also
Poetry

Intention determines moral quality of
act, 640-41

Interest, on loans, forbidden, 633
Interpretation, of poets, 103, 116, 421,
471, 488, 499

Intrust to another what one doesn’t
understand, 482

Irony: Plato, 138, 144, 158, 185, 209, 260,
268, 291, 335, 343, 486, 489, 516, 519,

526, 529, 551, 552, 554, 57o, 574, 592,
601; Socratic, 87, 89, 92, 94, 155, 160,
161, 196, 210, 466, 473, 480, 482
Is, denoting existence, 488

Jack of all trades, 86, 470
Jest and earnest, 160, 185, 202, 204, 238,
259, 368, 380, 41 1, 553, 601

Justice, 209 flf., 274; question of, the
source of all disputes, 458

KaXeis rt, 567
K hOapais, 636
Know thyself, 199, 417, 481
Knowledge, 96; and belief, 642; can ren¬
der an account, 528; and opinion, 159,
227, 284-85, 517; teaching a proof of,
517

Kpetrroi/es, 52 1

Language, 259 flf., 565 ff.; a tool, 261, 567-
68

Late learners, 265, 302, 570, 595
Laughter, 374, 633

Law, 210, 247, 630, 631; courts of, 641;
definition of, 425, 659; government of,
371; preamble to, 372-73, 631; un¬
written, 381-82, 637
Laws, a form of literature, 640
Leisure, 636
Life, a sojourn, 666

Logic, 77-78, 223-24, 298, 306, 498, 546,
563; both and each, 474; conversion,
459, 573

Logomachy, 569
Logos, 284-85 flf., 468
Longer way, 230, 563
Lot, 634

Love, 190 flf.; is blind, 632; as cosmic
force, 1 91 ; earthly and heavenly, 191,
543; is the lover, 194; power of, 546;
of soul, 543-44, 654
Lovers, perj uries of, 543

Macrocosm and microcosm, 607
Madness, 551 ; four kinds, 200; of the
poet, 551

Magnet, the poet a, 475
Man, 378; an animal, 509; divine, 494;
hard to rule, 313; the measure of all
things, 260, 271, 573; most savage
creature, 635; only animal that be¬
lieves in gods, 495; plaything and pos¬
session of God, 362, 383, 620, 625; a
political or social animal, 529
Marriage, 372, 37 9

Materialism, 175, 177, 178, 272, 282-83,

30I» 345, 392, 4JO, 594, 615; in psy¬
chology, 297-98

INDEXES

683

Mathematics, 157, 23 5, 270, 334, 338-39,
376, 385-86, 450, 501, 508, 514, 515,
528, 571, 614, 617-18, 634, 639
Mean, the, 352, 369, 629 .

Measurement, 309, 324; importance of,
458

Medicine, Plato’s interest in, 135, 205,
220, 372, 479, 555

Memory, 98-99, 205, 555; art of, 86, 92;

of childhood, 332; of Socrates, 476, 498
Metaphysics, 289; the background of,
233-34, 290, 298, 316
Metaphor: of hydra’s heads, 563; ship of
state, 521, 634; torch of life, 636;
hunting, 563; currency, 527; body vest¬
ment of soul, 530; aviary, 581; block
of wax, 580; wasp’s nest, 665; fire
added to fire, 626; shepherd of people,
602

Metaphors: commonplace, first used by
Plato, 460, 477; continued, 476, 573
Metempsychosis, 174, 529
Method: exhaustive, 581; extreme case,
260; follow where argument leads,
627; pretends accident, 628; unity of,
604; see Dialectic

Mind and body, 100, 138, 247, 270, 342
Misinterpretation, 289, 316, 394, 405 ff.,
508, 516 bis , 522 bis , 528, 532, 534, 542,
546, 548, 551, 553, 556, 567, 570, 615
Misology, 175, 531
Monotheism, 469
Motion, 393, 551

Music, 220, 222, 363, 365, 370, 560, 562,
563, 627; of man’s life, 170, 524
Mysteries, Plato’s use of, 513, 575
Mysticism, 537, 592

Myths, 121-22, 124 (Pro/.), 1 52-53
(Gorg.), 180-82 ( Phaedo ), 200-202
(Phaedrus ), 251 ff. (Rep.), 311 ff.

(Polit.)

Names, no matter, 579
Nature, 533; and art, 346; and conven¬
tion, 86, 142, 499; meaning of, 489;
study of, not impious, 386, 411
Necessity, 612, 616, 619
Negation, 303, 306
Neither-good-nor-bad, 490
Neo-platonism^ 289, 328, 536, 547, 553,
601, 602, 615, 616

Nominalism, 39, 574
Nothing too much, 540
Number, 324, 409; of lots in the Laws ,
379; the nuptial, 238
Numbers, abstract and concrete, 61 1

Oaths, 399, 402, 645
Old age, 208
&jjLOLo/ji€pr} , 497-98
One and many, 288, 302, 316
One language (no name for a thing), 596
Opinion, 454, 517; see also Knowledge
Opposites, knowledge of, one, 476
Oracle about Socrates, 463
Oriental influence, 26, 449
Origin of society, 217
Orphism, 8, 133, 151, 327, 380, 447, 553
Other, 280, 522, 580, 587-88, 595; and
opposite, 595
Own (oiKeiov), 194, 49 1
’Ox^ara, 536

Paradox, 86, 94, 116, 140, 199, 212, 226,
260, 273, 278, 564

Paradoxes: Socratic, 21 ; sophistical, 39;
of Stoics, 139, 148; of Stoics, Socratic,
504

Parents, duty to, 75, 85, 457, 468

Parody, 94

Participation, 583

“Parts of speech,” 260, 567

Past, much good in, 647

Pattern, 277, 288, 333, 376, 599

Peritrope, 144, 274, 278, 577

Pessimism, 628

tbavTaaidf 595-96

$>06pos, 610

“Philosopher, the” (dialogue), 591
Philosopher and lawyer, 234, 275 ff., 577
Philosophers, 202, 226, 228; must be
kings, 564

Philosophy, 32, 171; the shame of, 229;

a study for youth, 143, 506
^pbprjcrLs, $26
Physiology, 341

Piety, 41 1; supposed elimination of, 79-
80, 460
Plants, 341

Plato, mentioned, 82, 169, 524
Plato, character of, 33, 41, 42, 48, 52 flF.,
451; fairness of, in stating other side.

684

WHAT PLATO SAID

16, 56, 497; not dogmatic, 515; knows
what he is doing, 280, 290; later phi¬
losophy of, 50, 302, 316, 319, 408, 451 ;
likenesses of, 52; never forgets, 458,
471! 5°S; patriotism of, 187, 350, 370
Plato, life of, 1 ff.; abstinence from poli¬
tics, 32; his Academy, 28 ff. ( see also
Academy ); association with Socrates,
18 ff., 21; death, 51; education, 3;
later years, 27, 50; military service, 5,
6; his poetry, 17-18, 45, 448; reading,
7 ff. ; travels, 24 ff.

Plato, literary art and style of, 94, 140,
154, 169, 189, 248, 506 ( see also
Style); dramatic self-correction, 563;
imagery, 456 ( see also Metaphors);
interlocutor enters into the game, 474;
later style, 316, 355-56, 622-23, 634?
leitmotif , 526; modulations, 157, 457,
513; as a novelist, 453; self-check, 630;
use of dual, 518
riXarreu', 630

Pleasure, false, 322 ff.; and the good, 500;
not to be dissociated from righteous¬
ness, 626, 633; pure, 324; in the soul,
610

Pleasure (and pain), 145 ff., 170, 203, 246,
321-22, 361, 362, 363, 374, 474, 508,
524, 562, 605 ff., 623, 625, 637; belief-
compelling, 530
nXeope^ia, 505

Poet: a magnet, 475; a winged thing, 475
Poetics, 219

Poetry: appeals to emotion, 249-50; de¬
fense of, 248-49; diction and thought,
476; is enigmatic, 656; is inspiration,
200, 631

Poets: authors of wisdom, 489; banish¬
ment of, 244, 561-62; dangerous to
offend, 659; quoting of, 87
Political art, 71, 164, 225, 313, 432, 454;

see also Art, the royal
Politics: aim of, 657; the true, 509
Polymathy, 384, 420, 431 ff., 638, 656
Polyphonic prose, 192-93
Polytheism, 76
Postponement of a point, 481
Power, unlimited, is bad for mortals, 629
IIpaTMa, 497
Pragmatism, 273, 576
Praise, 194; and blame, 473

Prayer, 207, 262, 333, 351, 368, 383, 419
ff., 556, 628, 655
Predication, universal, 477
Preparedness for war, 623
Presence, in theory of ideas, 93, 101, 109,
1 17, 166, 179, 301, 480, 522, 535, 585
Pre-Socratics; see Index of Names
Probability, rhetoric of, 205
Probable tale, 613
Progress, 91, 472
Prolixity, 304, 309, 382, 599
Prophets, 486

Proportion, 138, 180, 333, 536
Protreptic, 162, 163, 422, 519, 657
Proverbs, 133, 188, 260, 380, 404, 429,
457. 48.5, 486, 488, 5°9. 532, 633, 634
Pseudo-science, 202, 204, 302, 512, 514,
53', 532, 535, 55°: of mythology, 198
Psychology, 480, 499, 533, 551, 579, 580,
582, 609

Punishment, 495; the worst, 578
Puns, 503, 544

Pythagoreanism; see Index of Names,
s.v. Pythagoras

Qua, 489, 663

Radicals and Plato, 83, 465
Reaction, law of, 242
Reading in antiquity, 572
Realization, of Utopias, 226, 238, 376,
564, 602

Relativity, 9, 93, 260, 271, 474, 498; of
up and down, 536, 614
Religion, 375, 410; canons of, 561; cere¬
monies of, 642; criticism of popular,

78, 460; of Plato, 79-80, 394-95 ff->
643-45; Plato’s caution in, 222;
Plato’s conservatism in, 633; primi¬
tive, 568; “rustica Phidyle,” 656
Reputation, importance of, 646
Respiration, 618
Rhapsodes, 97

Rhetoric, 40, 134 ff., 203 ff., 502; kcltci-
(jtclgiS) 474

Ridicule, unimportant, 457

Sacred disease, 619

Safety not first, 466

Satire, 97, 98, 493, 567; see also Irony

Science, Plato and, 236, 616, 619

INDEXES

685

Sea: disadvantages of its nearness, 630
Sea-power, 370

Secret doctrine, alleged, 41, 46, 320, 525,
588, 607

Self-control (self-rule), 223, 362, 506, 623

Sex, 380, 387, 640

Simple life, 217, 220, 366, 627

2K07r6s, 406, 508

Slaves, 636

Sophist and dialectician, 593
Sophists; see Index of Names
Sophrosyne , 105, 369, 371, 480
Soul: body tomb of, 507; a breath(?),
527; fall of, 201 ; food of, 592; forms the
body, 479; immaterial, 301; impor¬
tance of, 647; imprisoned in body, 667;
is the self, 417, 654; its nature, 200;
its true nature unknown, 251; the
mortal, 343; parts of, 223, 389, 563;
physician of, 493, 509; priority of, 393,
642; tripartite, 200, 223, 246, 526, 552,
563; two types of, 643; uses body, 415,
417, 654; of the world, 332, 334-35
Souls, human, 336
Space, 337, 338, 606, 616-17
Specialist, 97

Specialization; see Division of labor
Specification of vague claims, 476
Speeches, long and short, 213, 471, 498
Sphere, 46-47
Spurious works, 58, 452
“Static,” 575, 579

Stoics, 139, 420, 504, 556, 602, 632, 655,
659, 664, 668
Srotxeia, 263, 568, 636
Style: homely, 93, 197, 198, 473; judg¬
ments of, 553; statistics of, 59, 453,
566; of Timaeus , 344 ff., 348; see also
Plato, style and literary art
Style, Plato’s 31, 456, 469, 485, 641 ; criti¬
cized, 379, 633, 635; subtleties of, 512,
512, 520, 537

Subtleties, 76, 77, 104 ff., 212, 480
Suicide, 170,390, 525
Superstition, none in Plato, 41, 84, 467,
5°9, 634> 635, 639, 641, 646
2u<7(7tTia, 621
Swan, 530

Synonyms, not distinguished when ir¬
relevant, 520, 528, 573

Ta kavrov tt parreii', 480

Teleology, 321, 329, 336 ff., 346, 607, 619

Text, 60

Theodicy, 391 ff., 644-45
“Third man” argument, 585
Third person, use of, for courtesy, 473
Thought, a parole intirieure , 280, 323, 580
Time: endless, 380; moving image of
eternity, 613
Tragedy, 4^7, 561
Training successors, 517
Transition, 75, 103, 577, 605, 653
Travel, 403
Trinity, 47, 359

Truth, 374, 61 1, 632; see also Falsehood
“Truth,” the book of Protagoras, 576
Two temperaments, 269, 314, 379, 560,
57 3

Tyrant, 149, an, 212, 243-44 ff., 313, 371

Unconscious, 281, 608
Unction, 205, 262, 318, 333, 359, 366, 370,
539

Unity: of method, 604; of Plato’s thought,
59, 67-69, 73, 78-79, 98, 1 17, 260, 268,
407, 453-54, 567

Universal knowledge, 481; pretenders to,

454

Use, makes things good or evil, 519
User: and inventor, 521 ; knows best,
249, 261

Utilitarianism (hedonism), 500, 527
Utilities (xpvpara), 665

Values, scales of, 327, 553
Verbs Qtrjpara v. 6v6paTa)f 596
Victory, no proof of virtue, 625
Video meliora , 500

Virtue: can it be taught? 70, 51 1; parts
of, 497, 624

Virtues: cardinal, 79, 222, 460, 499, 545,
624; definitions of, 455

Walls of Athens, 502
War, 171, 217, 359, 383, 416, 638; be-
tween Greeks, 226, 564
Wax, block of, 580

Wealth, 222, 239, 360, 376, 386, 434 ff.,

634, 645

Whole, not sum of parts, 285, 582
Will, freedom of, 254, 396, 644-45

686

WHAT PLATO SAID

Wills, 400

Wine, 361, 365-66, 62 5, 62 7
Witnesses, not arguments, 504
Women, 225 ff., 262, 380, 384, 509, 621,
632, 636, 638

Wonder, parent of philosophy, 271, 574

Word versus deed, 625
Written word, 43, 206, 555-56
Wrongdoing involuntary, 640

Year, the great, 202, 334, 553, 614
Young creatures, cannot be quiet, 625

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THEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT, CALIF.